


In Sickness and in Health

by itchyfingers



Category: Tom Hiddleston - Fandom
Genre: Adultery, Angst, F/M, lying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-05-23
Packaged: 2017-12-10 23:27:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 38,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/791408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itchyfingers/pseuds/itchyfingers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happens when you fall in love with a married woman who can't leave her husband?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_This story inspired by this photo:_

__

 

Cora was reading a message on her mobile when she saw him. She hurried forward along the walk, fumbling in her purse for her keys. She looked down at the man sprawled across her front step in a tuxedo, his long legs blocking her door. His collar was turned up against the chill in the air, and he looked anxious. “What do you think you’re doing here, Thomas? You can’t just show up like this,” she hissed.

He stood up, looming over her, and gripped her arm. “I saw you at the gala tonight and he wasn’t with you. Did you leave him?”

She looked up at him. His normally friendly open expression was marred by lines of stress around his mouth, and across his forehead. “I’m not leaving him, Thomas. What we did was wrong. It was a mistake, and it’s not going to happen again.” She looked down at the lock, her hands shaking as she tried to insert the key.

He followed her into the dark house and shut the door behind them. He didn’t let her go, instead pulling her closer to him. “You can’t really believe that, can you?” One of his hands gently cupped the side of her face and the air between them thrummed with an electric charge. She swallowed nervously, trying not to give in to the memories of that hand touching other parts of her body. As if reading her mind, he stroked her bare shoulder, leaving a trail of hyper-sensitized skin behind that ached for his continued caress.

Cora rested her forehead on his chest. “Please, Thomas, don’t ask me to do this.”

He wove his fingers through her long curls. “You wore your hair down. Did you do that for me?”

She hesitated, not wanting to admit the truth, but then nodded. She had thought of him as she had done her hair that night. She always wore it up, but when he had pulled all the pins out of it yesterday, letting it cascade down her naked back, he had told her that to wear it up ought to be considered a crime, because she was committing an offense against Beauty.

“You look so lovely. It was all I could do not to kiss you in front of everyone tonight.”

She stepped back from him and he reluctantly let go of her hair. “Don’t say things like that. You know it isn’t right.”

“What is right, Cora? I love you and I know you love me, yet you insist on staying married to him. He isn’t making you happy.”

“I love James, Thomas. I do. I love him more than you will ever understand.”

“Then why have you been flirting with me for the last year?” He was so frustrated with her and she could see how much he was hurting. “Why am I the first person you text in the morning? Why did you make love to me? If you love him so much, why are you acting like you are in love with me too?”

“It’s complicated.”

“How complicated can it be?” he yelled. “Do you love me or not?”

She couldn’t say anything. She knew she should tell him that she didn’t love him, but she couldn’t bring herself to lie. He gripped her by the upper arms. “Tell me, Cora. Tell me you don’t love me. Say the words and I’ll be gone and I’ll never bother you again. If you’re using me for some sick little game, please let me go because I have spent the last three years in love with you, and I will keep waiting for you until you tell me you don’t care for me the way I care for you. Put me out of my misery, one way or the other. Either tell me you love me or let me go.” He looked down at her, her dark brown eyes filled with tears, her full mouth, the slight curve of her breasts above the strapless gown she was wearing. “Tell me you love me,” he whispered, and he brought his mouth down on hers. She put her hands on his shoulders, half wanting to push him away, half wanting to hold on to him and never let him go. She breathed out his name as his arms wrapped around her, pulling her tightly against him. Cora parted her lips as she felt his tongue touch them. His lips slanted across hers, hungry for any sign that she loved him. Watching her avoid him this evening had been driving him crazy, especially since she had shown up alone. What had happened yesterday had been wonderful, but her tearful self-recriminations as she dressed and ran from his flat had haunted him. She hadn’t answered his texts or his calls and he had finally decided that he was just going to wait for her at her house until she arrived.

She kissed him frantically, craving the taste of him that until twenty-four hours ago had been a complete mystery. All of a sudden, she shoved him away. “I love you,” she said, her breath shallow, “but it doesn’t matter.” She pushed her disheveled hair out of her face and he could see the tears on her cheeks in the dim light. “It doesn’t change anything. Please, just go,” she pled with him. “James is upstairs.” She kicked off her heels and dashed up the curving staircase to the second floor. Tom stood, watching helplessly, as she ran from him. How could she kiss him like that, say those words he had been longing to hear and then flee? It was like some sort of fucked-up version of Cinderella, leaving two shoes behind instead of just one.

She shut her bedroom door behind her and leaned against the solid wood. She doubted he would be so foolish as to come after her, but she waited for several minutes before she was sure he was gone. She walked over to the bed and kissed James softly on the cheek, smoothing his blond hair back from his forehead. He stirred and slowly woke as she sat on the side of the bed.

“Hello, darling.” He smiled up at her. “You look even more beautiful tonight than normal.”

She smiled. “And you’re just as charming as ever. How was your evening?” She laid down next to him and rested her head on his chest.

He wrapped one arm around her, the tremor in his hand barely noticeable. He slowly stroked his hand up and down her arm. “Normal and boring. Went over fourth quarter projections. Hong Kong is coming in lower than normal and we’re trying to figure out why they are projecting lower profits when their production is up.”

“We might have to take another trip to Hong Kong to investigate. Remember that wonderful restaurant from when we went there five years ago? I wonder if it’s still there.”

He laughed and kissed the top of her head. “I wonder if that fountain you fell in is still there.”

She smiled as she remembered how loud the ducks had been, squawking at the strange invader of their watery home. “We really should go back. It’s been too long.”

He sighed. “Darling, I’m not sure if I can do that.”

“Why is that?” She turned so she was looking at him.

He gestured at the medicine bottles covering the nightstand. “You know very well why.”

“I’m not going to let you hide in here and the office for the rest of your life. If you have a bad day in Hong Kong, I will take care of you. I can even get a sexy nurse outfit if you want,” she teased him.

“Anything you wear is sexy.” He smiled back at her and she leaned up to kiss him softly.

“I love you and I know this isn’t what we had planned for our life together, but we’re going to face this together.”

“I don’t know what I would do without you, Cora. You are the light of my life.”

She smiled at him and rested her head on his chest again. The smile faded from her face. This cuddling was the closest they had been to sex in a long time. The side-effects of his medication had almost removed his libido, but they kept the tremors almost entirely at bay, and that was the important thing. The only ones who knew he had early onset Parkinson’s were the two of them, his parents, and his doctor. They had worked hard to make sure it stayed that way.

His hand traced over her bare shoulders, sweeping her hair to the side. “You’re wearing your hair down. That’s different.”

“Do you like it?”

“It suits you.”


	2. Chapter 2

Tom stared at the multiple monitors arrayed on the desk in front of him. To anyone looking in through the glass walls of his office, he would appear to be hard at work like usual. They didn’t know that he wasn’t actually seeing the screens of numbers flashing in a rainbow array in front of his eyes. Instead of tracking million dollar market fluctuations, he was lost in thought, memories dancing through his mind and squirreling away all his attention like a miser.

When he closed his eyes he could see her. The sunlight bringing out the golden glints in her dark hair, the sadness in her eyes when she looked at her husband. He and James went to too many events together, the hazards of moving in the same social circles, and he knew James first and primarily as a business rival. The delicate woman with him had always been lost in the fog of James’s self-aggrandizing form of socializing. She was quiet, content to hang on her husband’s arm it seemed. At first he had assumed that she was another trophy wife, selected more for beauty than for wit, but after being seated next to her at another one of the interminable parade of charity dinners that made up his social calendar, and listening to her sarcastic asides about the intelligence, moral hypocrisy, and fashion sense of the various speakers, he realized that dutiful corporate wife was a role that she played like a skilled actress. Part way through a particularly long speech, she took a pen from her handbag and drew a grid of dots on the back of the program, connected two of them, and then whispered, “Your turn!”

From that moment on, he was enchanted with her. That had been about three years earlier. He always knew there was no chance there; James and Cora were practically inseparable, and when James talked to her there was a gentleness in his face that was reserved solely for her. It pained Tom watching her look at James the way he wanted Cora to look at him. About a year ago, he had noticed her showing up at events more frequently without James. Questions about him were always delicately deflected, with murmurs of long evenings at work, out-of-town trips, or conflicting schedules. Tom had thought it was odd, after the two of them appearing so regularly together for so long, but he had seen this decay in the marriage of many of his colleagues. He tried to convince himself that it was none of his business, but he had minimal success.

The next time they were at the same table, she sat a bit closer to him, and she would touch his arm while telling a story, and when he brushed a loose tendril of hair away from her face, he could have sworn she turned into the touch. When he hadn’t seen her in a week and a half and it felt like it had been three months, he gave in and texted her. He had used the pretext of asking for a dinner recommendation for a client since she prided herself on being a foodie, but he simply craved any contact with her. That simple act had been the start of a daily conversation, texting back and forth about everything and nothing. Slowly, the texts had become more personal, slow revelations of inner thoughts and hints of hidden sadness on her part, carefully controlled compassion on his. There were no hints at physical longings or intimate desires, just the act of someone confiding in a friend over and over again.

But then they had been seated next to each other at another £5,000 a plate dinner and she had rested her hand on his thigh under the table, just above his knee. She had deliberately not looked at him while she was doing this, and as he looked over at her, he could see a subtle tension in her neck and in the set of her jaw that wasn’t normally there. He placed his hand over hers and watched as she relaxed.

That was it that evening, just the feel of his fingers around hers, nothing more. It was everything and not nearly enough. He knew, somehow, that if he pushed for anything more she would run. As much as he wanted to do something as simple as brush his thumb slowly and repeatedly across the back of her hand, he held himself in check, giving her what she asked for and nothing more.

That night, she had texted him, “Thank you.”

The glow of his mobile’s screen lit his face as he stared at those two words. He couldn’t decide how to respond. He paced his flat staring at the screen in his hand, paralyzed by the need to respond, the desire to tell her how he felt, and the certainty that it would be the worst possible thing he could do. Cursing his sudden lack of facility with language, he settled on the clichéd, “Any time.”

There was no way those two words could convey their true depth. He meant it. Any time she needed him, he would be there for her.

Her texts the next few days were more reserved, sparser in number and in content than they had been before, but she slowly reopened to him. She asked him if he was going to be attending the charity event for the new building at the botanical garden. When he responded that he was, she replied, “I’ll see you there tonight then.” He yelled to his assistant to track him down an invitation.

He had always thought she was beautiful, but that night she looked like an exotic flower. The dress she was wearing wrapped around one shoulder, folded low over the other breast, tied around her waist and hugged her hips like an orchid offering her up as nectar to the gods. He literally didn’t breathe for a few seconds after seeing her across the room. She turned her head and saw him and her face lit up as she smiled.

They sat together at one of the elaborately beflowered tables during the speeches that were a deft combination of praise and guilt designed to elicit the maximum donation from each guest. Then the speeches were done and the floor was turned over to the big band styled musical ensemble. She turned to him and asked, “Do you dance?”

And that was how he had ended up with her in his arms, one hand on the small of her back, the other holding hers at a proper distance. In heels, she came up to his chin, and he was struck again at the discrepancy between their sizes. His hand wrapped almost all the way around hers as he held it. They didn’t talk. Tom felt that if he did, there was no way he would be able to keep himself from telling her how he felt, not with her in his arms, the warmth of her hand on his shoulder, the scent of the single stem of freesia in her hair in the air around them. After three dances, she finally spoke. “We should probably stop now or people are going to start talking.”

“Do you want to go look at the gardens? They have them specially lit for the evening.”

She nodded, and they left the arboretum, carefully not touching each other. They slowly walked the paths, occasionally pointing out a particularly beautiful plant to each other, but not saying much else. As they entered the darker shade gardens, it seemed as if they were the only two people in the entire city. Fairy lights twinkled in the branches overhead, giving the enclosed glen an unworldly luminescence. There was a stone bench tucked under the drooping branches of an old willow tree. Cora sat down upon it and looked up at him expectantly. He stood in front of her. “If we’re found out here alone together, people will definitely talk.”

“I can’t really bring myself to care right now.” Her words were barely audible, but her eyes never wavered from his as she spoke them.

He sat down next to her and they both turned in like mirrors of the other. “Cora, what are we doing out here?”

“I don’t know. I shouldn’t be here with you. I know that.” She looked up at him, her eyes filled with an unimaginable sadness. He wanted to kiss her until that look was a distant memory but he couldn’t. He couldn’t stop himself, though, from stroking his fingers across her bare shoulder and watched as her eyes slowly closed and she bit her lip to keep her chin from quivering.

“Why the heavy sadness in your eyes?” Her eyelids flew open then, but she didn’t say anything as his fingers trailed down her arm and then he took her hand in his. He raised it to his mouth and gently placed a kiss on it. “Is it about James?”

Saying his name broke the spell that had lingered over their evening. She jolted to her feet, yanking her hand from his. “I have to go,” she whispered and hurried from the glowing copse as fast as she could. He went after her, his long legs allowing him to quickly overtake her, but he didn’t reach out to touch her. He didn’t want to risk her pulling away again. He quietly said, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked. It’s none of my business.”

She didn’t respond but when they made their way back to the arboretum, she paused before she entered and said, “Please, leave me be for the rest of the evening.” She wouldn’t meet his eyes but she lifted her chin and walked in to the building as if nothing was bothering her. He admired the inner strength he could see in her as she socialized with others, making her way to the exit in a slow but steady fashion. He left soon after she did.

Again, she withdrew, but slowly their routine of daily text messages resumed. Then one night his mobile rang and it was her. “Cora?”

“Tell me a joke.”

“What?”

“I need something to make me laugh. Tell me a joke.”

“Okay.” He wracked his mind for something suitable, but the only things left were silly jokes suitable for a child. “Knock knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Interrupting cow.”

“Interrupting cow,”

“MOOOOOO,” he shouted, before she could finish the traditional response.

She laughed, bright and crystalline, but he could hear the edge of hysteria to it as well.  The laughter dissolved into sobbing, and the call was terminated.

He rang her back but there was no answer. He tried again after five minutes and again after fifteen. He finally texted her. “Please call me if you need anything. Anything at all. Your wish is my command.”

She didn’t reply.

Three days later, an unexpected knock on his door revealed Cora standing there. “I was in the building having lunch with a friend and I thought I would stop by and say hello.”

He had never seen her look so nervous. After a moment of stunned silence, he recovered his manners and invited her in. She sat on his couch, not speaking. He asked if she would like some tea or something to eat. She asked for a vodka tonic. He was surprised but said he would be right back. When he came back from the kitchen with the lime bedecked glass, she was staring out the ceiling-to-floor length windows at the Thames.

“You have a beautiful view.”

He handed her the drink. “Yes, I do.”

She knew he was looking at her without even seeing him.

“Do you ever find yourself living a life that wasn’t what you had planned?”

“Yes.”

She took a long swallow of her drink. “Do you ever feel trapped because of someone else’s life?”

“Yes.”

She turned and looked at him. He was intently focused on her face. His hand twitched as he reached out to touch her and then drew back. She stepped closer, her gaze focusing on the button on his shirt. She reached out and fiddled with it. “I didn’t think love was supposed to make you unhappy.”

“Let me make you happy, Cora.” He lifted her face to his and he bent down to kiss her. He stopped just shy of her lips so she could choose whether or not this was something she wanted for herself. He would not force this on her. It felt like an eternity. He could feel her breath on his lips, and he licked them in anticipation. Her eyes flickered from his to his lips and back, searching his face for something. Whatever it was, she must have found it, because she lifted on her toes and closed the immeasurably huge and simultaneously infinitesimally small gap between them.

At first it was just contact, physical pressure, the feel of lips on lips. No movement, just touch. He drew back the slightest bit and she followed him. Her drink crashed to the floor unheeded as she wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him back down to her, unwilling to let this moment end. She was suddenly frantic, desperate to feel his skin on hers. She nipped at his bottom lip and he moaned softly. She dipped her tongue teasingly between his lips as they opened, and he met her, gentle tastes, the ebb and flow of their bodies learning each other. Her hands went to the buttons on his shirt, and she undid them as they kissed, her hands smoothing the fabric off his shoulders and down his arms. He watched as she stroked her hands over his chest, exploring a body that was very different from her husband’s. James was built like a superhero, big and muscled, while he was tall and lean. He suddenly worried what she would think of him, but she kissed his sternum with no sign of disappointment. Her hands stroked across his chest, down his abdomen, brushing across the waistband of his jeans. She kissed across his bared skin until he could take it no longer and he brought her face back up to his, claiming her mouth as his own. His hands dropped to her hips, slowly gathering up the fabric of her sundress. He pulled it up and off, breaking the kiss as the dress came between them.

“You are gorgeous,” he said as his gaze raked across her body. She was wearing a low cut bra, the cups barely covering her nipples, which he could see were already hardening under the lace. The barest wisp of cloth imitated a pair of knickers, the deep orange fabric glowing against the honeyed amber of her skin. Unlike many women, she didn’t seem shy about her body. He cupped her breasts, his thumbs stroking the nipples, teasing them through the lace. The fabric rasped against the sensitive skin, adding another layer of pleasure to the caress and she whimpered softly. He bent down and licked the exposed curve of her breast and her hands clasped his head, her fingers sliding through the golden curls as she arched her back slightly, pressing up against his mouth. His tongue trailed slowly downward, flicking the hardening peak, drawing another moan from her. He sucked it into his mouth, rolling it with his tongue, the wet lace intensifying every sensation. She whimpered and her hands clutched at his hair. He alternated between her breasts, his mouth on one, a hand on the other. He wondered at the strength of her response, wondering if it was him, or if James wasn’t an attentive lover, or if it had been a really long time, because every touch drew forth a quiet noise of pleasure.

He finally let go of her breasts and kissed her again. She was so much shorter than him that he finally picked her up, coaxing her legs around him. She rapidly caught on, her legs settling around his waist as they kissed, her hands still in his hair, and he carried her to the bedroom. He unhooked her bra as they went, and when he set her down on his bed, he slipped it off of her, tossing it to the side. She crawled back onto the bed as he undid his jeans, slipping them off before he joined her.

He prayed he wouldn’t wake from this dream as he leaned over her, his legs in between hers, his weight balanced on his elbows on either side of her head. He looked down at her, at her flushed cheeks, her swollen lips, at her eyes dark with pleasure. She hooked her legs loosely around his and moved against him, rubbing her hips slowly and teasingly against his pelvis. A teasing smile crept across her face and he bent down and kissed her.

She was hungry for him. “Please, I need you.” He looked in her eyes and he could tell she was serious. He wanted to spend hours getting to know her body, touching every cell of her body, exploring the complex topography of her form. Her voice was almost broken, though, pleading for him to take her. “I need you inside me. Please, Thomas.”

He gave in. He tugged her panties down her legs and then shimmied out of his pants. She watched him, eyes hooded, as he rejoined her. He slipped one hand between her legs, fingers teasing the bare hot slickness. She was ready for him. He lined himself up and pushed inside her in one long slow movement.

She closed her eyes and he waited until she opened them again to start moving within her. She wrapped her legs tightly around his hips, her heels digging into his buttocks. Her arms were around his shoulders as she clung to him. Her body moved in time with his, her hips rocking against him, taking him deeper inside of her with each slow steady thrust.

He clung to his self-control through sheer will-power. She was hot and wet and almost painfully tight around him, and the way she moved tore at his restraint. Part of him just wanted to hold her down and fuck her soundly, but right now, he knew she needed this slow and steady assertion of his love for her. She had her face buried in the crook of his neck and he was almost positive she was crying, hot tears that dampened his skin along with the thin sheen of sweat that coated both of their bodies as they moved together for an uncounted time. Finally, she whispered, “Make me come.” She loosened her arms, laying back on his bed and looked up at him. He could tell she had been crying, but there was no sadness in her face. “Make me come, Thomas.”

He levered himself up on his knees and slipped a hand down to where their bodies joined. He sought out her clit, circling the engorged nub with his thumb while his hand pressed down on her pelvis, holding her in place. He watched as her eyes widened and she bit her bottom lip. She tried to grind against him, but he held her motionless while he pumped into her, his thumb continuing its movement, slowly speeding up in time with his thrusts. He wanted her to know that this was something he was giving her, rather than something she was taking from him. She came undone beneath him, her fingers digging into the sheets beneath her, her head thrown back as she screamed ‘Tom.’ It was the first time she had ever called him by the shorter version of his name, and the small intimacy was the final push as he came inside her.

He kissed her softly, rolling onto his back and tucking her against his chest. They didn’t talk. He was afraid that any word would damage the closeness they had found together this afternoon. Instead he just held her, one hand over hers on his chest, the other slowly stroking her back. They laid together, their breathing slowly synchronizing, absorbing something intangible and vital from each others’ presence.

He finally kissed the top of her head and she tilted her face up to him. He kissed her softly on her lips and then slowly across her jaw and down her neck. Now that her initial need was over, he was going to take his time exploring her body, learning the unique terrain of her satisfaction. His world shrunk to the size of his mattress, the only sound in it from the movement of skin on skin and the soft noises Cora made caused by it.

Slowly he made his way down her body, collarbone and the inside of her elbow, the palm of her hand, the side of her rib cage. He ignored her breasts as too obvious, seeking out less travelled paths to her pleasure. He wanted to mark her, leave a message that he had been there for all to see, but he knew it wouldn’t be fair so he was careful not to suck too long or bite too hard. He skimmed his fingers down her sides and then across her stomach, watching as she arched under his touch, her body moving like an ocean swell meeting the land. His thumbs brushed across the front of her mound, pulling a sharp gasp from her, but then he moved all the way down to her feet and started working his way back up to her core. The arch of her foot, the inside of her ankle, the back of her knees. That spot where her inner thigh met her hip. She was whimpering now, almost a whine, trying to get him to touch her. Her hips bucked up helplessly and her hands grabbed at his hair.

He settled himself between her legs, slid his arms under her thighs and splayed his hands across her hip bones, holding her to the mattress before licking her softly. It was the slightest touch, but he felt her hands spasm in his hair. He pressed a little harder, parting her lips with the tip of his tongue but he made care not to actually touch her clit yet. Again he slowly licked her, up and down, until she was begging him for more. Finally, he settled on her clit, soft licks, exploring the unique feel of it on his tongue, in his mouth. He wanted to know what she liked, licks or sucks, the tip of the tongue or the flat, hard or soft. He listened to her breathing change, the pressure of her grinding against his mouth, the tone and volume of her calling his name. Finally, once he was sure of her pleasure, he slipped one finger inside of her, and slowly stroked it in and out as he repeated his explorations. Over her body he moved again, keeping her at a simmer as his mouth and his other hand sought her most sensitive spots. He took his time, a pleasure stroll, not a sprint over the course of her body. Finally, he settled between her legs again, adding a second finger as he sucked her clit between his lips, kissing it and licking at it. He quickened the pace of his fingers as he spelled out his name with the tip of his tongue, tattooing ownership on her most intimate flesh. He added a third finger as she sucked her clit hard, beckoning to her orgasm with hooked fingers and firm lips. He looked up the length of her body, but her head was thrown back so she couldn’t see him watching her as she exploded again, slicking his chin with her wetness. He kept licking her as she spasmed around his fingers, the velvet muscles clamping down over and over on his hand.

When she calmed, he drew out one last quiver from her body with a flick of his tongue against her clit and then crawled back up her body. Cora reached up and pulled her head down to him, tasting herself on his lips, on his face. She pulled back slightly and smiled up him. “Get on your back.” She pushed at him lightly with her hands and he grinned and obligingly rolled over. She straddled his waist and bent down to kiss him again. Tom’s hands fisted in her hair and sought out the pins holding it in place. He pulled them out one at a time as their lips moved, tongues touching in an erratic rhythm that danced counterpoint to their racing hearts.

She finally pushed up and her long hair fell in waves down her back and around her shoulders. “You are so lovely. It should be a crime for you to wear your hair up. A crime against all that is beautiful.” Her blush went from her cheeks down to her breasts. He palmed them and he pinched her nipples, earning him a delighted little sound and a beautifully arched back.

She slid further down his body, raised her hips and sank herself down on him with a surety that usually only came from long familiarity. Their groans echoed in the room as she stretched around him. Cora raked her fingernails down his chest, leaving lines of red that stood out against the pale skin. Tom gasped at the way the sharp pain accented the sweet pleasure of her wrapped around his cock.

He watched her as she started to ride him, a rocking movement of her hips that ground her clit against his pubic bone with every rotation. He moved with her, letting her dance lead for a while as she swiveled and gyrated against him. Eventually he slid his hands down to her hips and they moved together, her tempo matched by his motions, thrusting deeper with each push. She fell forward, bracing her hands against his chest as she gave up the last vestiges of control, transmuting his name through some alchemy into a cry for release. One hand bore down on her hip, holding her at just the right angle while his other hand sought out her clit, rubbing it quickly as he hammered into her pussy. She dug her nails into his chest as she came, screaming his name in shattered call of delight, her back bowing as every nerve that had been drawn taut released with an explosion of pleasure like fireworks igniting along her spine.

He thrust through it, letting the rhythmic contractions of her pussy milk his cock of everything it had, shooting deep inside her with reckless abandon. When he could see again, she was sprawled on his chest, completely relaxed against him. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her tightly to him, one hand on the center of her back, the other cupping the curve of her bum.

He awoke when she jolted up in bed. When had they fallen asleep? The light filtering in through the windows was the lavender of dusk. She hopped out of bed, grabbing her knickers and bra and fleeing from the room. He called after her but she didn’t stop.

He went after her and found her dressing in the living room, hooking her bra and doing that twist and shimmy that always seemed like an exotic dance. She pulled her dress on and ran a hand through her hair. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done this.” The words poured out in a babble, a panicked prayer for forgiveness from someone. He hoped it wasn’t from him, because he couldn’t condemn or forgive what she had done because he could find no wrong in it.

“Cora, you’re fine. Nothing’s wrong. You don’t need to apologize.” He reached out to her but she flinched and yanked herself away from him. Hurt, he stepped back. “Cora, please talk to me.”

“I shouldn’t have come here. It was so selfish of me. I’m sorry. I have to go.” She wouldn’t meet his eyes and she headed for the door.

“Cora, please, stop.” He went after her, but she opened the door and said, “Please, Tom, I have to go.” She looked at him and he could see she was crying. “I’m so sorry for doing this to you.”

She shut the door behind her.

He rang her mobile but she didn’t answer. Five minutes and he tried again. And then fifteen. He finally texted her. “Please call me if you need anything. Anything at all. Your wish is my command.” She didn’t. He was left with nothing but the scent of her on his sheets and a pile of hairpins.

He kept flashing back to that afternoon, wondering if there was something he could have said or done differently. Or that evening in the foyer of her home. She had told him she loved him and then she had left. Now, three weeks later and he hadn’t seen her. She didn’t answer her phone, didn’t respond to his texts.

He took her hairpin from his pocket, twisting it over and over again in his hands. He had no idea what to do.


	3. Chapter 3

She had convinced him to take a week off. Not to Hong Kong – he didn’t want to go somewhere that he would feel like he had to be working – but a week on a yacht in the Mediterranean was a lovely substitute. As they put out to sea the first day, she watched the land recede behind them and wished it was as easy to leave her troubles behind. It had been a month since she had gone to Thomas’s flat. A month since she had told him that she loved him. A month since she had had any contact with him at all.

She looked over at where James was lounging on one of the big deck chairs and smiled. Joining him, she snuggled into his side, grateful that her small size made it easy for her to squeeze in with him almost anywhere. “So, gorgeous man of mine, what shall we do today?”

He smiled down at her. “Well, first I think I am going to kiss you, darling.”

“Oh, you think so, do you?” Her grin was teasing.

He nodded and then ran his hand through her long hair, gathering it into a tail he could hold. He lowered his mouth to hers and claimed her lips with a passion she hadn’t felt from him in a while. His lips were soft and yet demanding, pulling from her a moan of delight. He captured first her top lip and then her bottom, biting softly at the full curve of her lip. He pulled her head back gently and slowly kissed across her jaw line, sucking at the soft flesh right behind her ear. “Do you know how long it has been since I left my mark on you?”

“Too long,” she whispered breathlessly, as he scraped his teeth down her throat. She could feel the hand in her hair shaking slightly, but she concentrated on his lips. They were currently mapping out a trail from her collarbone down to her sternum. He pulled up one side of her bikini top, freeing her breast which he nuzzled, the stubble on his chin tickling against her skin. She shivered, and she could feel his smile forming against her breast. He rasped his beard against her nipple and it hardened. “James!” A quiet exhalation of his name as he repeated the motion before sucking the pebbled peak into his warm mouth. He worked the sensitive nub between his tongue and his upper teeth and she grabbed his hair, the blond locks shining in the sunlight. “God, I’ve missed this,” she whimpered as his hand freed her other breast from its covering and started circling his nipple with the pad of his thumb.

“You’ve always had the most sensitive breasts, my Cora.” His voice was husky, and he blew gently against her wet skin and smiled possessively as he watched her shiver. He bent his head to her other breast and tongued the nipple. She shuddered and he smiled again. He loved watching her lose control of her body, knowing that he was causing every shudder, every moan, every scream of pleasure. He bit down softly, just enough to cause her to squirm. He lifted her onto him, letting her straddle his lap so he could more easily reach her breasts with his mouth. He pulled her firmly against him, nudging his erection against her. She bit her bottom lip and smiled delightedly and started slowly circling her hips on his lap, rubbing against him with a teasingly gentle pressure.

He undid the ties of her top, tossing it to the side, and cupped her breasts. He leaned back, listening to her enjoy what he was doing to her body. Her inability to stay quiet had gotten them into trouble on more than one occasion. The first had been when her brother, his best friend, had discovered them together, _in flagrante delicto_. That had led to a fist-fight. James could understand why; no one wanted to hear, much less see, their little sister being taken from behind by a man twice her size. James had eventually had to hold Brandon down and explain that he and Cora were in love, and that he wasn’t just screwing around with her. It wasn’t until Cora showed up for a family dinner with a diamond on her left hand that Brandon had truly forgiven him, but Brandon had stood up for him at their wedding.

He settled his hands on her hips and started grinding up against her, applying more pressure so that he was rubbing her most sensitive spots as well. His thumbs slipped under the sides of her bikini bottom, his fingers under the back and he squeezed, delighting in the feel of her soft flesh under his hands.

She leaned forward, resting against his chest as she continued the sinuous grind of her hips against him. He held her closely, tenderly. It had been so long since they had been together. It had been humiliating explaining to his doctor that he just couldn’t achieve an erection any more. That had been two days before they had left on vacation, and he had held on to the hope that the bottle of little blue pills would work, and that their trip together would mark a new start for both of them.

He wasn’t sure how much longer he would last with her grinding on top of him like this. She had always been able to set him on fire from the slightest caress. When they first starting dating, he had thought her a bit of a tease. It wasn’t until later that he realized she honestly had no idea of the effect she had on him with the lightest touch. She had only been eighteen when they met, though they didn’t start dating for another year, when she was at university and out from under the watchful eye of her parents and three older brothers. It had been two months into their relationship that he found out that she was a virgin. He honestly had no idea how she had made it that long. She was a tactile creature, almost cat like, constantly stroking things absentmindedly. An inveterate cuddler, she would curl up next to him on the sofa while they watched a movie and spend the entire two hours caressing his thigh without realizing she was doing it. Once they had had sex, he almost flunked a term of his MBA program because he couldn’t convince himself to leave her bed, not with her inviting words and even more inviting body beckoning him to stay. Even now, when he travelled for work, he would schedule an extra day off when he got back, knowing she was going to not let him out of bed until she restocked her store of his affection.

“Fuck, James, I want you inside me right now.” She sounded shattered already and he had barely touched her. He felt the tears rising but he choked them back down. She had been so incredibly supportive through all of this. He hated this disease for what it was doing to him, but he hated it even more for what it was doing to Cora and her future. He tried to shove that thought out of his mind and focus on the here and now, his beautiful, sexy wife almost naked in his lap, the feel of her breasts against his chest, the sound of her desire in his ears.

“Well, then, my darling, we should probably go find us a bed before I take you right here on the deck with no regard for who might be watching.” He smiled at her cheekily. The crew they hired had signed a standard NDA, but that didn’t necessarily mean that they didn’t keep an eye on what the two of them got up to on board.

He gripped her firmly with one arm, using the other to push himself to a stand. His head swam, suddenly dizzy as he stood. She wrapped her arms around his neck, her legs locking together around his waist in a position long familiar. He carried her towards the passage to their bedroom, a slight stumble in his step, but when he stepped over the threshold, he tripped. He put out one hand to keep from falling, bracing himself on the wall. Cora lurched in his grasp and he slipped, trying to keep her from falling and hurting herself. She landed awkwardly on her feet, and he slumped to the ground.

“Fuck!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. “I just want to make love to my wife, is that too much to fucking ask?”

“Oh, baby, it’s okay,” she crooned softly as she scrambled over to him.

“No, it’s not! I can’t carry you, I have to take a pill to get a fucking erection when I have the most wonderful woman in the world in my lap. I feel my mind going, my ability to concentrate, my ability to see patterns in the data. I’m going to lose my company, Cora. Once word leaks out that I have this damned disease, we’ll have enough investors pull that it will collapse the fund. So many people are going to lose so much money, and my employees are going to lose their jobs, and their families are going to suffer. Tuition payments, house payments, all of it gone because my fucking body betrayed me.”

She watched helplessly as he ranted. He had been so strong and so positive for so long, but he had finally cracked. He looked at her, tears streaming down his face. “And then there’s you. I’m so sorry you got stuck with me.” He cupped her face gently in one hand.

“Hey, I chose you. I love you, James, with all of my heart. I am yours.”

“You didn’t choose this, love. You didn’t choose to face a future with a husband that doesn’t have one.”

“I said ‘in sickness and in health’ when I married you and I meant it, James Foster Donovan.”

“This isn’t sickness, Cora. This is just decay.”He held his head in his hands. She couldn’t tell if the tremors were from the Parkinson’s or from him crying, but regardless, she wrapped her arms around him as best she could and held him tightly. “I wish I was strong enough to kill myself.”

“James, no!”

“You don’t understand, Cora. All I am going to do from here on out is make life harder on everyone. My future is bleak. I’m going to lose my mind and my body and I’m going to watch you suffer because of it. Because of me. How does that translate into a reason for living?” He looked over at her, his crystal blue eyes swimming in tears.

She grabbed his face between her hands. “You can’t kill yourself!”

“Right now I can. At some point I physically won’t be able to. I’ll be in a wheelchair. I won’t have control over my limbs. The medication I’m on now to keep me from shaking too badly will eventually end up causing me to have uncontrollable limb movements. You’re the most vibrant, living, sensual person I know, and I’ve sentenced you to a slow death, handcuffed to a future no one would willingly inflict on someone they love. I’m going to turn you into a nursemaid instead of a wife and a mother.” His angry words faded into subdued despair.

“Promise me you won’t kill yourself. You can’t put that on me. You can’t make me live the rest of my life knowing that I’m the reason you took yours!” She pleaded with him, hoping that she could make him see how devastated she would be if he hurt himself.

“Then leave me.” She made a noise like she had been punched in the stomach. “Leave me and go find yourself someone else who can love you, who can give you hope and laughter and children. Find someone who can fill your days with all the things I can’t.”

“James, no.” She was crying now. It would be the easy way, to take him at his word and leave, but it wasn’t who she was. She couldn’t just abandon the man who had been her reason for smiling for over a decade. “We still have a good future. We have so many things we can do together. We will still laugh together. I love you.”

He shook his head. He reached up a trembling hand and wiped the tears from her cheek. “I know you love me. So please, when we get back from vacation, walk away and don’t come back. Let me hold you this last week, hold you in my arms while we sleep, hold you in my arms while we watch the sunset, hold you in my arms while I kiss you one last time. And when we get back to London, leave me. Please, darling, do it for me.”


	4. Chapter 4

Their week on the yacht was amazing. James and Cora spent it curled around each other in bed making love. When they talked, neither one brought up the future. They ignored everything that fell outside the circle of ocean they could see from the deck.

When they got back home, they had a huge row. James insisted that she leave him. Cora insisted on staying. He had finally said, “I’m not going to let you waste your life on me. If you won’t leave, I will.” He had kissed her goodbye, “Promise me you’ll be happy again,” and walked out the front door. Moving men had shown up the next day, boxed up his office and clothes and left her with a hole in her heart. She didn’t see him again.

She stopped waiting for him to come back after two weeks, acquiescing to the cold reality that there was no way she could make him stay with her. She got in a cab and showed up at Talie’s door. “James left me.”  And she started to cry. She didn’t stop for another week. Talie offered to let her move in to the guest room until she figured out what she was going to do next. Realizing the degree to which she had depended on James – she hadn’t even known which bank her accounts were at – had made her despondent over the collapse of everything she had known.

Not long after she moved in with Talie, she was waiting for the lift when someone next to her said, “Cora?”

She recognized the voice. She turned and looked up at Thomas. “Hello.”

She could see him try to keep the surprised look off his face when he saw how wan and tired she looked. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m living here for a while.”

“Oh.” She could see the questions racing through his eyes, hundreds of questions he was too polite to ask.  The doors to the lift opened and they both entered. She punched the button for the third floor while he depressed the button for the penthouse. They stood together in awkward silence until the doors opened again. As she stepped out, he held the door to keep it from closing. “Cora, if you need anything… Anything at all. No expectations, no pressure. I just want you to know you have a friend in me.” She looked back at him, a sadness in her eyes even more intense than had been there three months ago when they had made love. She tried to smile. “Thank you.”

Moving out on her own had meant shoving stuff in the lift, as a flat had opened up in Talie’s building. She was working away in her studio, Florence and the Machine blaring from the speakers, when she heard a knock on her door. Wondering what Talie wanted, she opened the door, only to be surprised to see Thomas standing there. He looked at her, down at the craft knife in her hand, and then back at her. “Were you expecting someone?” He looked concerned for her.

She glanced down at the razor tipped instrument and laughed. “No, sorry, I was just cutting some stuff in my studio.”

“Oh. Okay. Um, I heard that you had moved into this flat, and I thought I would bring you a housewarming gift.” He held out a beautiful potted orchid, the blossoms the same color as the dress she had worn the night they had danced together.

She reached out and took the plant from him. “Thank you. It’s lovely.”

“I thought of you when I saw it.”

“I’m sorry, I’m being rude. Would you like to come in?” She gestured with her free hand.

“Only if you put that knife away,” he smiled as she had whipped it around when she gestured.

She laughed. “Of course. Come in. I’ll just go put this where it belongs.”

She walked into her studio and put the protective cover back on the knife before placing it on her worktable. She left the orchid there as well, thinking its beautiful shape would serve as inspiration. She turned around to see Thomas in the doorway.

“So what were you cutting?”

She shook her head, embarrassed. “It’s just a little project I’m working on.”

“Can I see?”

She wanted to say no, but she didn’t want to be rude, so she stood aside and pointed at the big table set in front of the window. She watched as he walked over, looked down, looked at her in surprise, and then looked back at the table, bending down to get a closer look. “You made this?”

“Well, it’s not done yet, but, yes.”

“It’s gorgeous.”

“No, it’s not really, but it’s kind of you to say so.”

“Cora, this is beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like it. What is this called?”

She blushed at the compliment. “Scherenschnitte.”

“What?”

She repeated the word. “It means scissor cuts.”

He said it, and she snickered. “Your German is atrocious.”

He laughed. “Yes, but this is beautiful.” He turned back to the cut papers on the table in front of him.

“Thank you. Traditionally it’s done with just one layer, but I’ve been experimenting with multiple layers in different colors to see what kind of effects I can carve out. It’s hard to get the dimensions to look right with this paper though. I think I’m going to have to go to a heavier…” She trailed off. “Sorry, I’m rambling.”

He was watching her, the glow in her cheeks as she talked about her art a pointed contrast to how pale she had looked the last time he had seen her. “No, I love listening to people talk about things they’re passionate about. It’s kind of my thing.”

“Your thing,” she repeated skeptically.

“Helping people do the things they love to make the world a better place.”

“Right. And make millions of dollars in the process.” She rolled her eyes at him.

He smiled. “Hiddleston Social Justice Investing – where dividends are paid in more than just dollars.”

She laughed. “For a British company, that’s kind of insulting.”

“Yes, but we’re internationally traded, and besides, ‘where dividends are paid in more than just pounds’ doesn’t have the same alliterative flow to it, does it?”

“True, I guess.”

“I didn’t realize you were an artist.”

She laughed. “I am not an artist. I earned my degree in Fine Arts, but it kind of took a back seat after graduation. I’m just puttering around, trying to keep myself busy.”

“Don’t sell yourself short. You are creating something beautiful in here.” He smiled down at her. “I should probably be going. I have a lot of work I have to get through this evening.”

She walked him to the door. As he was leaving he turned around and said, “I don’t suppose you would like to go to dinner with me tomorrow evening?”

“People would talk.”

“Let them talk.” His voice was huskier than it had been a few moments before.

“It’s only been three months since the divorce was finalized and you two are business rivals. James may not be my husband any more, but he doesn’t deserve cruelty.”

“Then come have dinner with me upstairs. I’m a horrible cook, but you can have your choice of any take-away in the city.” He grinned at her.

She hesitated.

“Come on, it will be fun. You can tell me more about your art and mock my business model.”

She smiled. “Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

“I’ll look at my diary and then text you about the time.”

She knocked on the door to his flat the next evening, incredibly nervous. She had stared at her closet for hours trying to decide what to wear. She had finally settled on a lace cardigan over a sleeveless knit top, skinny jeans, and leopard print ballet flats. She pulled back her hair in a loose braid, wondering at the new emotional complexities of doing her hair.

He opened the door and she was grateful to see he was casually dressed as well, a white button down shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a pair of dark jeans. “You look lovely, as always,” he said.

She smiled. “I brought wine.” She handed him the bottle. He looked down at the label. “Very nice.” He raised an eyebrow in appreciation. “You must have a nose for wine.”

“Not really,” she laughed. “I just asked the sommelier for something expensive and pretentious.”

He clutched at his chest like she had stabbed him. “Is that how you see me? Expensive and pretentious?” He was smiling.

“I’m pretty sure that shirt costs more than I made a week in the university bookshop.”

He smiled. “And that dress you wore cost enough to feed an African village for a month.”

“Touché. But at least I wasn’t earning it by casting myself as the Robin Hood of the developing world.”

“You didn’t earn it at all, darling. James did.”

The blood drained from her face. “You know, I think this was a bad idea. I’m going to go now. Keep the wine.”

She turned on her heel and headed for the door, but he grabbed her by the arm. “I’m sorry, please stay. I didn’t mean that.”

She turned to face him. “No, I think you did. I think you see me as just a pampered little wife with no talents and skills of her own who just played tennis and went shopping and spent all of her time on party planning. And you know what? You’re right.” She jabbed him in the chest. “That’s what I did. I spent all my time dedicated to James and his company. I worked client dinners and entertained sexist jackasses so my husband could get the information he needed to make one more trade. I played tennis with women I hated because my husband needed to have time with their husbands on the golf course to make the inside deal.” She got steadily angrier as she continued, advancing on him until she had him backed up against the wall.

“I shopped to make sure my husband never wore the wrong suit or was half a season out of style because he always had to look perfect without ever trying. I threw all those charity dinners that you went to that make you and your company appear like you are good guys when you were just using it for a tax write-off. I served on more charitable boards than I can count and I raised money to put books in schools and clothes on kids backs and flowers in the parks and music in our theaters and maybe that doesn’t matter to you,” she jabbed him again, “Mr. Rockstar of the Banking World,” she sneered the title that had been splashed across the cover of one of the industry’s lead trade magazines, “because I did it for the people I share a country with instead of people on another continent. I worked every day of my life so don’t you _dare_ tell me I didn’t earn what I had, because I gave every hour of my life to that man and,” she suddenly dissolved into tears, the fury that had animated her draining away in an instant, “and it wasn’t enough in the end.”

“Oh, Cora.” He sighed softly and gathered her in his arms.

She sobbed into his chest. “Why wasn’t it enough?” And then quieter, “Why wasn’t I enough?”

Tom held her firmly for long minutes, stroking her back while she cried. When he couldn’t feel her shaking in his arms anymore he whispered, “I’m so sorry he hurt you.”

“I deserved it though. He was right, I barely made it a year before I…” she looked up at him, her face flushed and eyes red from crying. She shook her head and stepped back and wiped away the tears on her face with the heel of her hand. “I’m sorry. This isn’t why you invited me over.”

“Well, no,” he replied smiling, rubbing his neck self-consciously, “but the food hasn’t arrived yet, so you haven’t upset the agenda.” He smiled down at her, and managed to coax a small smile from her in response.

“And I’m sorry for turning your shirt into a very expensive handkerchief.”

“You don’t have to apologize for anything, Cora. I deserved more than a little yelling and tears for being so incredibly rude to you.”

There was a buzz at the door. “That must be the food. Why don’t you go pour us some pretentious wine,” he handed her the bottle, “while I settle the bill?”

She smiled. In his kitchen, she started opening cupboards until she found the wine glasses. She was rummaging through drawers looking for a corkscrew when he came in with the food. His breath caught in his throat for a moment at the sight of her seeming so at home in his house. She had pulled out plates and silverware as she had found them. He wanted to kiss her on the back of the neck, that spot he had found that made her shiver. It wasn’t the right time, though. He wasn’t sure if it ever would be, but it definitely wasn’t right now.

“Where is your corkscrew? Or do you do that sword thing?”

He laughed. “No, the sword thing is pretentious even for me, and doesn’t that only work on champagne?”

“You’re never going to forgive me for calling you pretentious, am I?”

“Maybe. Someday.” The last word was heavy with meaning. He opened a drawer and pulled out the corkscrew. “Would you like to, or should I?”

“You go ahead. I would probably cork it.

She transferred the food, chicken in some sort of mushroom sauce, risotto and roasted butternut squash, to the plates while he dealt with the wine. She had always found the act of opening a bottle of wine an oddly sensual thing, placing the corkscrew just right, the twist of a strong wrist impaling the cork, the soft sound on release. She tried not to watch him as he opened it, but she couldn’t help but notice the movement of his hands and fingers. She flushed suddenly from the memories of those hands and fingers opening her to him.

When they were seated at the table, she said, “Why do you have like three plates but a full set of barware for twelve?”

He laughed. “I said I’m a horrible cook. I don’t eat at home a lot.”

“Are you telling me you drink at home a lot?” she teased.

He laughed. “I tend to have a drink in the evenings, but I’m not an alcoholic, if that’s what you are hinting at.”

“I was just thinking that you must entertain a lot with that kind of bar set-up.”

“I like being prepared. You never know what a guest might ask for.”

“Like a vodka tonic?” Her voice was quiet.

His eyes caught and held hers.“Exactly.”

She set her fork down. “Should we discuss the elephant in the room?”

“If you would like.”

“You said you loved me.”

He nodded. “Yes, I did. You said the same thing to me.”

“Yes, I did. Did you mean it?”

“Yes. Did you?”

She felt pinned beneath that gaze. She looked down at her lap so she could collect her thoughts. “I think I convinced myself I loved you. I needed you, or to be brutally honest I needed what you could give me. But I’m not sure if I ever actually loved you.”

“What was it that you needed?”

She didn’t answer. He finally said, “I think you owe me an answer.”

“I needed to be adored. I needed to be the center of someone’s world. I was the baby girl growing up, the petted princess, and then James swept me off of my feet, and his heart revolved around me. And then…” she sighed, disgusted with herself, “when I wasn’t anymore I didn’t know how to cope with that. And you adored me. And it was so nice to have someone who adored me again.”

“So, you used me.” His tone was flat.

“Yes.”

“Did you care for me at all?”

“Yes. We had known each other for a few years, and I knew you cared for me more than you should. And initially I just wanted someone who would flirt with me. But over time, I came to reciprocate some of those feelings. It just got so complicated, because I cared for you, and it would have been so much easier to be with you than to deal with my life, but I loved James. I love James,” she corrected herself, “but I didn’t know how to face…” she trailed off.

He was suddenly angry.“What the hell was going on in your marriage that it drove you into my arms?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“What do you mean you can’t tell me? I think I’ve earned a little honesty from you.”

“No, I mean, I can’t. It was part of our divorce decree. I’m legally bound from discussing certain aspects of my marriage.”

He sat back in his chair, digesting this. He was an expert at reading between the lines of legal agreements – you didn’t make millions trading without developing a certain sense for extra-legal shenanigans and buried skeletons – and every nerve in his body was screaming at him that something was going on here. Finally he asked, “Did he hurt you?”

Her eyes flew to his, shocked. “No! He was my gentle giant.” She dropped her head again, suddenly fascinated by the ring on her finger, twisting it mindlessly. “The only time he ever raised his voice at me was in our fight the day he left.”

They sat in silence for a long time.

“I didn’t love you, and I’m sorry for saying that I did. But I did care for you. I still do care for you. I just don’t know how to negotiate my past with you. I’m not married anymore, but James will always be in my heart, and you’re part of his world. And that person I was when you fell in love with me,” she shook her head, “I’m not that person anymore. I’m different, and my life is different, and I…I…” she struggled for the words to express all the emotions careening around inside her head.

He reached over and took one of her hands in his. “How about this? We have a fresh start. This is our first date, no history, no past.”

She raised an eyebrow in disbelief. “You’re calling a do-over?”

He nodded. “You’re beautiful enough that I would have chatted you up at a pub.” She didn’t think she had ever seen such a cheeky grin. “So, Cora, I’m Thomas. It’s nice to meet you.”

His grin was infectious. She smiled at him in response, a light in her eyes that hadn’t been there in months. “It’s nice to meet you, too.”

He insisted on escorting her back to her door after their date was over, even though it was only six floors away. They had watched _The Great Escape_ after dinner. He was appalled that she had never seen what he considered one of the classic films in the history of cinema. Though they started out seated next to each other on his sofa with a respectable distance between them, by the end she had curled up next to him, her head on his shoulder and his arm around her.

When they were at her door, she leaned against it, looking up at him. “Thank you for a wonderful evening.”

“Thank you for being delightful company.”

She grinned. “Except for that first part.”

“I deserved all that and more.”

She shook her head.

“You truly are delightful, Cora.” He leaned down and kissed her softly on her cheek. “I look forward to getting to know you.”

“You too.” She hesitated and then leaned up and kissed him gently. “Text me so I know you got home safe.”

He laughed, and she grinned at the happy sound. She let herself into her flat.

As soon as got back to his flat, he called his assistant. “I need you to get me a copy of James and Cora Donovan’s divorce decree. It’s probably sealed, but I don’t care what it costs. I want to see it. And somewhere between twenty and twenty-four months ago, something happened that led to the end of their marriage. I want to know what it was. Start digging.” He hung up the phone. He needed to know what he was facing.


	5. Chapter 5

 

T – Come out to dinner with me.

C – Thomas, you know how I feel about that.

T – It doesn’t have to be any place fancy. Just come get fish and chips or something. You’re allowed to have a life.

C – I don’t want to hurt James.

T – Sooner or later you’re going to have to start caring about your own heart more than his, darling.

C – I’m just not ready yet.

T – Will you tell me when you are?

C – I will. I promise.

*

Thomas always left for work before Cora got out of bed, but he quickly got in the habit of stopping by her flat when he got home from the office. It turned into a steady routine. He would show up at some point in the late afternoon. He would make tea while she finished working on whatever project she had going on in her studio. He would bring her a cup, placing it on the table carefully away from her workspace. He would brush her hair to the side, and kiss the back of her neck, and leave her be until she was done. He would sit on her couch, reading reports that his assistant had handed him on his way out the door until she joined him. She would cook, or he would order take-away, and they would eat, and talk, and be.

*

“You set the oven on fire!”

“I told you I was a horrible cook!”

“I thought that meant you ate a lot of pot noodles, not that you literally burnt things down!” She was standing there holding the fire extinguisher, which she had used to douse the fire Thomas had started trying to broil steaks. The residue was all over the counters and floor and appliances. “I should call the building manager. I’m going to be in so much trouble.”

“No, you won’t.” He shook his head.

“How do you know?” She was still looking at the charred disaster that was her oven.

“I own the building.”

Her head snapped around to look at him. “Seriously?”

He nodded sheepishly.

“I’ll make sure to pay my rent on time.”

He laughed.

She sighed and shoved her hair out of her face. “Well, this is one way to convince me to go out to dinner with you.”

He raised his eyebrows in surprise. “You sure?”

She nodded.

“I’ll have to remember to set things on fire next time I need to convince you to do something with me.”

She laughed. “As long as you pay for the damages.”

*

C – Are you home?

T – Yes, why?

C – Mind a visitor?

T – Not if it’s you.

He opened his door when she knocked a few minutes later.  “To what do I owe this delightful surprise?”

“I wanted to tell you happy birthday.”

“How did you know it was my birthday?”

“I know all sorts of things.” She raised her eyebrows suggestively before dissolving into giggles. “And I brought you a cupcake and a present.” She handed him the small boxes she was holding.

“Come in, come in. We’re not having cupcakes in the hall.”

They settled themselves on to his sofa. “Cake or presents first?” he asked.

“Presents, and then cake.”

The box was smaller than his palm and he opened it to reveal a pair of heavy silver and gold engraved cufflinks, set with blue agates in the shape of a double-headed axe. “Wow. These are phenomenal.”

“The design is called a labrys axe. For the ancient Greeks and Minoans, only the most powerful were allowed to wield one. There was even a special Zeus statue that held one. I thought they would suit you.”

He tugged her towards him, his hand on the back of her neck, and kissed her. “Thank you. No one’s ever bought me cufflinks before.”

“I noticed you wear the same two pair repeatedly. I thought maybe a little variety might be nice.”

“You remember what cufflinks I wear?”

She blushed and looked away. “Force of habit.”

Realization dawned in his eyes and a slight smile emerged, though she didn’t see it. “Ah. Well, I’m honored that you’re looking out for me like this. I’ll think of you every time I wear them.”

*

“Take a deep breath, you’ll be fine.” He placed a gentle kiss on her forehead.

“I can’t believe you talked me into this.”

“It’s just a cocktail party and silent auction. We’ll stay an hour and then leave.”

Cora took a deep breath and let it out. “Okay. But don’t you dare wander off and leave me alone.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” He tilted her face up and kissed her softly. “I’ll be by your side the whole time.”

They walked into the ballroom together. Cora noticed heads turn in their direction and then whispered comments swishing around the room. She pasted a smile on her face and squeezed Thomas’s hand. It was amazing how fast she slipped back into the smile and air kiss and inane chatter routine. Most people were at least tacitly polite, though there were a few catty comments.

“So, Cora, does this count as a move up or down the ladder?”

“It sure looks like you landed on your feet.”

“Well, this will show James, won’t it?”

“I’m not trying to show anyone anything, Tabitha.”

“Really? Because he just walked in.”

She forced herself not to look. “Well, maybe we’ll have a chance to chat this evening.” She smiled and walked over to the bar and ordered another scotch. She felt Thomas come up behind her and put his hands on her waist.

“Do you want to leave?”

She threw back a swallow of the amber liquid. “No, if I’m going to date you, I’m going to have to get used to this. And it will all calm down eventually. There’s just blood in the water and they are circling like a bunch of sharks.”

“I had no idea that it would be this bad.”

She turned around to face him. “I told you it would be. It’s why I was reluctant to do it for so long, until I felt like I was sure enough about you that I thought it would be worth facing this. I wasn’t just protecting James. I was protecting myself.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t understand.” He looked truly apologetic.

“That woman who made the comment about ‘landing on my feet’? She was one of my best friends when I was with James. She stopped taking my calls when we split up.”

He bent down to kiss her softly. “If you change your mind about leaving early, just let me know.”

She tucked her arm through his and they started circulating again.

“Cora.”

She would have recognized that voice anywhere. She turned towards it. “Hello, James.”  She scanned his face, up and down his body. He seemed perfectly steady. “You’re looking well.”

“I’m feeling well.”

“Of course, you know Thomas.” She nodded towards him.

“Of course.” James extended his hand in greeting, and Thomas had to let go of Cora’s hand to shake it. Thomas slipped his arm around her waist when he dropped James’s hand.

“So, how are you doing?” He looked awkward and it didn’t help that people were obviously watching their conversation.

“I’m doing well.”

“What are you doing with your time now?”

“I’ve gotten back into the studio.”

“Oh, that’s nice. I remember when you used to play around for hours in the one at university.”

Thomas bristled. “She’s quite talented.”

James spared him a glance. “I’m sure she is.” He turned his attention back to Cora. “You look different.”

“My hair’s longer. And I’m wearing it down.”

“You’re wearing less jewelry than you normally do.”

“I got rid of most of my pieces about a year ago.” She saw his eyes flick down to her hand and notice the absence of the diamond that he had placed there so many years earlier and then a faint stiffening of his jaw. “My normal is very different now.”

“Are you happy?” She could tell he was genuinely concerned about her.

“Yes.”

“Good. I’m glad.” He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “I miss you.”

She clenched her lips together. “I’m not sure that’s my problem anymore.”

“I know. Have a nice evening. I’m sure we’ll see each other again some time.”

She smiled politely as he left.

Thomas looked down at her. “Are you okay?”

She nodded. “Shall we go bid on outrageously overpriced items for charity?” She smiled up at him, but he could see the pain in her eyes.

“If you want to. Please don’t feel like we have to stay on my account.”

“It was bound to happen sooner or later, right? And now I can stop worrying about it.” She took a deep breath. “Let’s go bid up the price of stuff that those bitches are bidding on.”

He laughed. “Whatever you want, darling.”

She was quiet in the car on the drive home, staring fixedly out the window. When he escorted her to her door, she invited him in. “Can I have a hug?”

He held her for hours while she cried that night. When she fell asleep in his arms on the couch, he carried her to her bedroom, tucked her in, kissed her on her forehead, and quietly left.

*

Thomas stared at the divorce decree. He had to say one thing for James: the man had been incredibly generous in the financial settlement, both in a lump sum and in ongoing alimony payments which argued that it wasn’t anything Cora had done to end the marriage. Most of the joint assets had been liquidated, but she owned a beach house in Majorca and a ski chalet in Switzerland, neither of which she had mentioned. Of course, he thought, she didn’t talk about money much at all, and lived an incredibly modest, almost Spartan life. She splurged on her art supplies, but other than that lived simply, cooking most of her own food and avoiding most social events. Sometimes he wondered about the change in her – if this was who she truly was or if she was just avoiding anything that might remind her of her ex-husband.

The decree didn’t give any hint as to causes for the divorce. But one line – that Cora was forbidden to disclose in any matter to any entity information that may be harmful to the financial wellbeing of Donovan Investments Ltd. – confirmed his suspicion that there were secrets there that he needed to uncover. Anything that could not only end a marriage but bring down one of the biggest investment firms in Britain was something he needed to know, not just for his personal life but for the safety of his own business.

*

They were curled up on his couch again, having finished _The Graham Norton Show_ and most of a bottle of wine. Her head was resting on his shoulder and he was idly playing with her hair. “Are you happy?”

She tilted her head to look up at him. “What?”

“Are you happy?”

“Sure.”

“Really?”

“I guess, why?”

“You were happy with James for years, and now you seem to be living a very different life, and I was wondering if you are as happy now as you were then?”

“I don’t know. I mean, I loved James, and we were incredibly happy together. And I thought I had a good life, but it turns out the rest of it was…sort of empty, I guess. I was busy all the time, but looking back, the people I thought were my friends really weren’t. The friends that I have now, like Talie, are friends I made when I was in university.” She shrugged. “Things always look different in reverse.”

“You still have me as a friend,” he reminded her.

“Yes, I do, cheeky man. But your life is different too, now, it seems.”

He shook his head. “Not really.”

“You don’t go to nearly as many events as you used to.”

“That’s because my reason for going to all of those functions is now sitting in my living room.”

“You don’t have to stay home because of me,” she protested, embarrassed that her recalcitrance to re-enter the society scene was impeding him from doing what he wanted.

“I think you misunderstand me, darling. I want to stay home. I hated so many of those stupid dinners and parties and whatever else they were called. I would much rather have just written a cheque and stayed home watching _Top Gear._ I went because it was the only way I could see you.”

“Really?” Her brow raised in unbelief.

“Really.”

She blushed and looked away from the intensity of his gaze. He gently turned her face back towards him, fixing her with his eyes. “Really.” He leaned in to kiss her and her eyes closed as their lips came together. The kiss was sweet, pure, like a first kiss but it melted into something hot and aching. He leant in towards her, needing to not only be touching her but to be in her space, sharing her place in the world.

“I don’t understand,” she said softly.

“What don’t you understand?” He brushed her hair back from her face.

“How you can love who I was then, and who I am now, when you say they are so different.”

He sat back. “I always thought you were a standard corporate wife – prettier than most,” he grinned and she smiled back, “but then one night you challenged me to a game of Complete the Square in the middle of a boring speech and it was so unexpected. It made me pay attention to you at first just out of novelty and I started to realize that you were intelligent and witty and charming and funny as well as pretty and elegant and refined. I liked seeing that sparkle show up at the oddest times. It was as if I had found a diamond in a room full of rhinestones. I see that same sparkle a lot more now, like when you’re talking about your latest art project, or making me listen to some new musician you’ve discovered. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking on my part, but I’d like to think that the person you are around me is closer to who you are in your heart than the Stepford Wife you impersonated when necessary for so many years.”

“I sparkle?”

“Brighter than any gem.”

She leaned forward and kissed him, pulling his mouth down to hers. He wrapped his arms around her back and she scrambled forward, straddling his lap. His hands dropped to the curve of her bum and pulled her firmly against him. It was no longer enough for her to smell his unique scent as they cuddled; she wanted to feel it on her skin. Cora rocked her hips forward, rubbing boldly against his pelvis, and she could feel him hardening in response. This was not the time for teasing kisses and gentle touches; she had a sudden burning desire to feel him buried deep inside her that could not be quenched.

“Thomas?” she whispered against his parted lips.

“Yes, darling?”

“Take me to bed.”

He groaned and she could feel it vibrating in his chest and her nipples hardened from the sensation. He stood and carried her easily to his bedroom, kicking the door shut behind him. He set her on her feet at the side of his bed and reached behind his neck to pull off his t-shirt. Her hands were already on the button of his jeans and she undid it and the zip and slid her hand inside and wrapped it around his hardening cock. He gasped at the sudden sensation as she stroked him and he couldn’t keep from thrusting into her hand. She tugged at his jeans with her free hand and he gained enough control over his body to help her. She slipped to her knees in front of him and smiled up at him as she extended her tongue to touch the head of his pulsing shaft. He groaned again, impossibly deep in his throat at the feel of her wet mouth slowly surrounding the head of his cock, sliding up and down just the first few inches, her tongue rubbing against that sensitive spot on the bottom. When he thought he was going to go crazy, she suddenly slid her mouth down his cock, taking him entire, the wet sound echoing with his moans.

He tried to keep from thrusting into her mouth and she grabbed hold of his thighs, pinning him in place while she sucked him like the sweetest lolly she had ever had. He finally grabbed her hair in both hands and pulled her slowly off of his cock, gasping as her mouth audibly broke the suction she had so lovingly created.

“Anymore of that, little girl, and I will shoot my load down your throat. And as much as I would love that, I have other ideas for where I want it to go tonight.”

She smiled up at him and he pulled her to her feet. This time it was her clothes they worked in concert to remove and in seconds she was naked and he was picking her up and tossing her on the bed and he crawled on top of her while she was still bouncing.

He slid his hand between her thighs and she was already dripping, slicking her thighs with her own arousal. He slipped one finger inside her and she cried out, her hips bucking up and her head falling back. “Is that what you want, darling?”

“Yes,” she cried.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes!” Even louder this time.

“How about this?” His voice was teasing as he slipped another finger inside her and she moaned, clenching helplessly around his hand. “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you,” he said.

“Yes!”

“Or maybe you like this,” and he slipped a third finger inside her and pressed his thumb to her aching clit.

“Oh, fuck!”

“Oh, is that what you want, baby? You want to be fucked? Why didn’t you say so?”

He pumped his fingers inside her a few more times and then pulled them out. Her whimper of emptiness was still hanging in the air when he grimaced. “Fuck, I need a condom.” He started to crawl over to the nightstand but she grabbed him. “No, I’m on birth control.”

He grinned and came back to her, settling himself between her thighs.

“Tell me you want this,” he said, taking himself in his hand and stroking his cock up and down her slit.

“I want it.”

“What do you want?” he asked, continuing his teasing motion.

“I want your cock,” she was practically begging, rocking her hips upwards to gain more friction.

“Are you sure?” He started rubbing the head of his cock in slow circles against her clit.

“Yes. I want your cock, Thomas,” she pleaded.

The sound of his name on her lips broke his control and he thrust deep inside of her with one hard push.

She groaned, a whimpered ‘fuck’ expelled from her lungs by the force of his body rocking into hers. He slipped a hand under her bum and lifted her hips slightly before he started to slowly thrust in and out. He pulled almost all the way out at first, and then would slide back in, a slow, teasing pace that had her clutching at his chest, leaving nail marks on his abs.

“Thomas, fuck me, please. Please, baby, I want you to fuck me.” She repeated those words like she was praying a rosary, and he gave in to her pleading, steadily increasing the tempo of his hips slapping against the back of her thighs.

He licked his thumb and pressed it to her clit and she quivered, the first sign of an impending orgasm and as he started circling the swollen flesh he bent down and sucked a hardened nipple into his mouth, scraping his teeth against the pebbled nub. He smiled as he felt her hands grab fistfuls of his hair and her moans took on a transcendent quality, that perfect nirvana of his name as her mantra, and he felt and saw and heard her orgasm with a quality that surround sound and 3D would never be able to replicate.

He bent down and slid his arms under her legs and pushed them upward, changing the angle that he was thrusting inside her. Her eyes opened wide, the leisurely descent from her high turning without warning into another ascent like a roller coaster slowly but steadily climbing higher. She watched as his control started to slip, his white teeth biting into his bottom lip, his breath becoming faster, his groans deeper and he looked down at her and said, “You’re coming with me.” He reached down to her achingly tender clit and gently stroked it, a softness at odds with the fierce look on his face, and that sweet control sent her over the edge, and he fell with her and caught her, panting at the bottom, and he held her safe and new and fragile in his arms.

*

T – I brought you back a gift.

C – You didn’t have to do that.

T – I know, but it was too perfect to pass up.

C – When do I get it?

T – I can bring it down now if you want.

C – Ooo, yes, please.

A few minutes later, he knocked on her door. She opened it to see him standing there, a grin on his face, holding a box about the size of a ream of paper.

“Welcome home, darling.” She kissed him on the cheek.

He came in and set the box on her kitchen counter. “I’ve been gone two weeks, and I get a kiss on the cheek? Come here and kiss me properly, woman.”

She blushed but went willingly into his arms. He leaned back against the counter and she stepped between his legs, sliding her arms around his neck. His arms looped around her waist and pulled her snuggly against him as he lowered his mouth to hers. She smiled into the kiss as their lips touched, softly first and then with more pressure. She touched the curls of hair at the nape of his neck, threading the silken strands through her fingers, tugging gently, and he groaned softly, deep in his throat. He pulled back slightly, wanting to see her eyes. She smiled up at him, her eyes slightly glazed from his kisses, as if his lips were a drug. “I missed you while I was gone,” he said.

“I missed you, too.” She suddenly felt shy.

“You should come with me some time. I think you would like tramping around in strange places.”

“I don’t know.” She wrinkled her nose. “The pictures you sent looked pretty rugged. I’ve never even been camping.”

“It’s fantastic. New people, new food, new experiences.”

“Would I have to eat bugs?”

His laughter made her smile. “No, I’ll make sure you don’t have to eat bugs.”

“Okay, then, I’ll think about it.”

“Really?”

The sudden intensity in his voice made her pull back a little. His face was serious, the earlier laughter gone, and his eyes were wide, almost childlike in their earnestness.

“Really.”

He kissed her again, soft and tender. “Thank you.” Another gentle brush of his lips against hers. He pulled back and a grin started to creep across his face. “Do you want to see what’s in the box now?”

She laughed and nodded.

“Well, our south-east Asian office has been looking into projects that will help prevent erosion. With typhoons and such, there are areas losing inches of top soil a year, which means people are starving because the farmland is ending up in the Bay of Bengal. We found a group that is replanting with native perennials, and then harvesting them at the end of the growing season. The roots stay in the ground, and keep the soil from eroding, and then they make this with the plant material.”

He took the lid off of the box. She looked at the contents, looked up at Tom in surprise, and then started pulling things out of the box. Sheets and sheets of paper, in all sorts of colors and textures and thicknesses filled the box. She started spreading it out on the counter, sorting it into stacks based on color families, rich fans like peacock tails taking shape under her hands. “You brought me paper,” she whispered.

“Do you like it?” He sounded nervous.

She looked up at him, her eyes shining. “It’s perfect. I think this is the most thoughtful gift anyone has ever given me. I love it.” She reached up and pulled his face down to hers with both hands and kissed him. “And I love you.”

 

_In case you’re interested,[these are the cufflinks](http://www.cufflinks.com/sterling-and-18k-gold-blue-agate-labrys-axe-cufflinks.html)._


	6. Chapter 6

The evening had been a clusterfuck of epic proportions.

He undid his bowtie, remembering how when he had tied it this evening he had contemplated what it would look like blindfolding Cora, or wrapped around her wrists, maybe binding them to the headboard. Now he just dropped it on the ground, wondering if Cora would ever be back in his bed or even in his life.

It had started out wonderful. Cora and he were attending one of the major social events of the year. She wore a dusky blue gown that showed all of one shoulder and hugged her waist and somehow showed most of her leg when she moved, covered only by one translucent layer of fabric. She was breathtaking and beautiful and he had planned to ask her to move in with him tonight. They had been effectively living together for a few months except for sleeping together, and now that they were spending every night he was in London in one of their beds together, he wanted to make it official. He wanted to make them official.

The first crack in his plan for a perfect evening had come not after they had arrived. One of Cora’s previous friends had come up to her and said, “Cora, darling, now that you’re back, you should come help us with the charity dinner we’re planning.”

“Back from what, Charlotte?” Cora’s voice was poisonously sweet.

Thomas looked down at her, alarm rising in his eyes.

“Well, you know,” Charlotte was flummoxed as to how to delicately say what she meant, “from…” she waved her hand vaguely, “your sad…past.” She trailed off.

“You mean now that I’m dating someone your husband thinks is important enough to make me worth your attention.”

Charlotte’s eyes grew huge and she raised a hand to her chest in offense. “We were just trying to give you some time to get over your loss.”

“Right. Because nothing helps you get over losing your husband than losing all your ‘friends’ at the same time. I’m sorry, Charlotte, I’m going to be busy that night, but send me an invitation. I’ll make sure to send you a cheque.”

Charlotte turned on her heel and stormed off. Thomas looked down at Cora reproachfully. “Was that really necessary?”

“Probably not, but it felt good.” She smirked.

“Just because they hurt you doesn’t mean you have to respond in kind.” His voice was gentle.

“Yes, well, maybe I’m not as noble as you.”

“It’s not about nobility, Cora. I have to deal with her husband on a regular basis.”

“So, I should just suck it up to make your life easier? That seems a little Stepford to me.”

“That’s not what I meant, Cora.” He was about to go on when he realized that she wasn’t looking at him anymore. He followed her gaze and realized why her eyes had suddenly gone dead. James had entered the ballroom with a tall, gorgeous, leggy brunette on his arm and she was wearing a dress that made her look both elegant and sexy at the same time. He looked back to Cora and watched as her jaw clenched in anger.

Thomas stepped into her line of sight and looked at her with concern. “Are you going to be okay?”

“I’m fine. I’m just surprised to see him with someone, is all.” Her voice was as cold as ice.

“Would you like to dance?”

“Of course.” She managed a passable attempt at a smile as he took her on to the dance floor. This time, he didn’t have to worry about being appropriately distant. He tucked her hand over his heart and held her against his body with a hand on the small of her back. He felt her relax by degrees into his arms as he swirled her around the floor. He dipped her and she laughed as he pulled her back up and against him. “We should do this at home.”

“What, dance?”

She nodded. “I love being in your arms like this.”

“When you say ‘home,’ what do you picture?”

“You.”

He smiled down at her. “Move in with me.”

She blinked in surprise. “What?”

“Move in with me. We’re practically living together anyway. We’ve spent every night together since you told me to take you to bed. Let’s make it official.”

“But…”

“But what?”

“Aren’t we supposed to have a talk about the future or something first? Where you see this going? Whether or not you want children? Marriage?”

“Are you asking me to marry you, darling?” He grinned at her.

“N-no!” She stopped dead in her tracks. “No!”

He was surprised by the fear in her eyes. “Cora, what’s wrong?”

“I need to go.”

She turned and hastily made her way off the dance floor. Once she was among the tables, she fled out of the ballroom. Damn it, why did she always run from him? Another flash of motion caught his eye. He watched James going after her. Fuckall. Had he just given James the way to take her back? Why had she reacted like that to him asking her to move in with him?

James found Cora sitting at the hotel’s bar.

He sat down next to her and ordered a drink and a refill for her scotch.

“Hello, love.”

She didn’t look at him. “So, does she know?”

“No.”

“How serious is it?”

“We’re dating.”

She met his eyes in the mirror hanging behind the bar. “So you’re okay with her wasting her life on you, just not me?”

“It won’t get that serious.”

“Does she know that?”

Silence.

“I want to tell Thomas.”

He turned to face her and grabbed her wrist. “Absolutely not.”

She yanked her hand free. “He needs to know why we split up. He deserves to know. I can’t move forward with him without him knowing about my past, without him understanding all of what happened between us, between me and you.”

“He would destroy me with that information.”

She shook her head. “No, he wouldn’t. Put him under a non-disclosure agreement.”

“It’s no good. The damage would be done before he would be punished, and he could do it from a foreign country and I’m pretty sure they don’t extradite for breaking an NDA.”

“I promise you he wouldn’t do that.”

 “How could you ensure that?”

“If I asked him to keep silent, he would.”

He smiled. “You really are so naïve, aren’t you?”

“I’m not naïve. He loves me. He wouldn’t want to hurt me.”

“And seeing me get hurt would hurt you.”

“Yes.”

Neither of them saw Thomas standing in the doorway to the bar, watching them.

James’s voice dropped and he leaned in towards her. “So you still care for me.”

She placed a hand on his knee. “I’ll always love you, James.”

“If I asked you to come back, would you?”

Her breath caught in her throat and she raised her hand to stroke his cheek. “Are you asking?”

He placed his large hand over her small one on his cheek, pressing it against his face. His eyes closed and he took a deep breath. “No. You deserve to be with someone who will make you happy for the rest of your life.”

Neither of them saw Thomas turn around and leave.

She pulled her hand away. “You would have. If you would have let me. Michael J. Fox has had Parkinson’s for over twenty years and he’s starting a new TV show this fall. He’s had kids since then. We could have been together but you forced me away.”

“Do you think this was easy for me? I agonized over this decision. But I could see how sad you were. I could see how sad I was making you. You never looked at me the same way after I got diagnosed. You always were checking my hand to see if it was shaking before you would look me in the eye. I became a disease to you first, and then a person. It used to be when you would look me up and down you would get a sexy twinkle in your eye. Now…now you just get sad.”

“So, it’s my fault that you left me? Because I was sad for you?” She stared at him in disbelief.

“I’m not saying it’s your fault. But you were a daily reminder that I was sick. You made it harder on me.”

“You left me because I couldn’t turn my heart off enough?” The anguish in her voice made him flinch.

“I left because I didn’t to be the one making you sad, Cora. I love you. Even now, even here with another woman, I still love you. But you’re not sad anymore. I want to punch that bastard in the face every time I see him touch you, but at the same time, I want to thank him for making you smile again. You have a tender heart, and no matter what I did, I was going to hurt it. So I opted for breaking it all at once rather than bit by bit. And I would do it again, just to hear him make you laugh.”

He threw back the rest of his old fashioned, set the glass on the bar, and walked out.

Cora finished her drink and left a few minutes later. She went and found Thomas who was back in the ballroom. She slipped her hand in to his and listened as he chatted with some of his friends. When he excused them, she led him to a quiet corner. “I’m sorry for running away like that. I just panicked.”

He wrapped his arms around her waist and held her closely. Their stomachs touched as he looked down at her, concern evident in the lines forming between his brows. “Are you okay, darling? Really?”

She nodded. “It’s just, I guess I’m a little skittish when it comes to making steps forward in a relationship. I mean, look how long it took me to finally sleep with you.” She tried to smile.

“Which time?” he teased, and then winced as he saw the blood drain from her face. “Cora, it was a joke. I’m sorry, it was a bad attempt at a joke.”

She pushed him away. “I think I’m just going to go home now. I’m not feeling well.”

“I’ll get the car.”

“No. I think I’m just going to catch a cab. Give my excuses to your friends.”

“Cora,” he grabbed her wrist, “please stay.”

She looked down at his hand, just where James’s hand had been not so long ago. “You know, sometimes I think you and James would be best friends.” She yanked her hand away. “Please, don’t cause a scene. I’d really prefer not to be the butt of any more gossip, if that’s possible.”

She kissed him on the cheek, icily polite, and left.

He knocked on her door when he got back to their building, but she didn’t answer. She hadn’t answered his texts or his call either.

Resignedly, he went up to his flat. The bow tie was on the floor, and he was undoing the opal studs on his tuxedo when his mobile rang. He grabbed it, hoping it was Cora, but saw that it was assistant calling. Wondering what could merit a phone call this late at night on the weekend, he answered.

“Hello.” He listened for a minute. “He’s got what?”


	7. Chapter 7

Thomas had woken in the morning to a text message from Cora. “I’m going out of town for a few days. I’ll call you when I get back.”

He texted back, “I’m sorry for what I said last night. I love you.” He had gotten no response.

He was now sitting in his office, pouring over the medical records of James Foster Donovan. He had spent several hours the night before researching Parkinson’s disease on the internet, and had to admit to a grudging respect for the man that he gave Cora up so that she wouldn’t have to go through what he was going to face. He also finally understood the haunting sadness that had possessed her the last year of her marriage, thinking that this was the future she was going to face. No wonder she had been reaching out for some sort of support, not being able to speak of what she was going through.

He understood James’s desire for secrecy. In a lot of industries, the limitations that he would be undergoing would be able to be worked around with little problem. However, in the financial industry, which bought and sold based on rumor as much as fact, the ability to react in a split-second was essential, and even the perception of mental weakness or physical inability could cost a company millions of dollars in trades.

He looked up at a knock on the door. His assistant was standing there. “Dr. Harrigan to see you.”

“Show her in, and then absolutely no disturbances unless it’s Cora or the markets hit trade restrictions.”

He stood to shake the hand of the tall, thin woman that his assistant ushered in. “Thank you for coming in to see me on such short notice, Dr. Harrigan.”

“Thank you for your generous donation to my research institute. What can I do for you?”

He pushed a copy of James’s medical records across his desk to her. He had redacted the identifying information, but he wanted an expert to tell him what was going on. Whenever he researched anything medical online, he always ended up diagnosing himself with rare, fatal disorders, so he wanted to hear from someone besides Google.

“I want a second opinion on this patient’s diagnosis.”

“That would be easier if the patient were here, you understand.” She looked at him over the top of her glasses.

“Well, that’s not possible, so we’re going to have to go with what we have in front of us.”

She looked down at the file. She made little noises, humming in the back of her throat as she went through the records. “Do you mind if I write on this?” she asked.

“Not at all.”

She started jotting notes in the margins and circling phrases.

About fifteen minutes later she sat back and pushed her glasses back up her nose. “Based on this file, I would say this man was correctly diagnosed with early onset Parkinson’s disorder. It seems to have been caught fairly early, and with the proper medication regime he could have years of fairly healthy living ahead of him. I would recommend a physical therapist to be added to his care team to help with muscle toning, but it’s a fairly standard treatment plan.”

“How is his brain function?”

“Without seeing the patient specifically, it’s hard to say. He’s been diagnosed for two years at this point. He’s probably noticed a slight decay in cognitive functions – slowness in word recall, problem solving, planning – for example, but again, that’s individualized, and without seeing the actual patient, it is impossible to say for certain.”

“What about his family?”

“What about them?”

“What stresses would they be under in dealing with this condition?”

“Long-term degenerative disorders are hard on everyone involved. It’s not just the patient who suffers. Caregivers undergo immense amounts of stress knowing that this commitment is going to last and worsen for as long as they are together. Frankly, some of my patients end up getting divorced over this, and a lot more end up being completely dependent on their spouse and that can destroy a marriage, even if it is legally intact.”

“What do you recommend to caregivers to do about the stress they have to deal with?”

“Respite care. Find time off on a regular basis that they can have to do something that they enjoy while knowing the patient is being cared for. And also, a support group. They have to be able to talk to others in their situation for their own mental stability. There’s immense therapeutic benefit to the caregiver to have someone who understands their situation to talk to. It increases happiness and marital stability as well.”

He shook his head. Everything Cora needed and James couldn’t give her any of it. No wonder she had struggled so much.

“Is there a test that you would have wanted to run on this patient that didn’t get ran?”

“There’s not actually a test for Parkinson’s disease. It’s a process of ruling out other possible causes for the symptomology. They ran a CT scan. I prefer an MRI, but a CT scan gives a good view of any possible structural abnormalities that may be causing the symptoms. This person’s physician was very thorough. Parkinson’s isn’t a disease that gets diagnosed lightly.”

Thomas held up the case to a CD that had been sitting on his desk. “Would looking at the CT scan help?”

“You have a CT scan and you’re just telling me now?”

“I didn’t think you would be able to read it without a specialized program.”

She shook her head. “It’s just like any other movie.”

Within seconds he had the video up on the biggest monitor. He turned it around so she could see it and she took the mouse from him without asking. She watched the whole scan through, and then started backing through it. “So, this isn’t you,” she said without looking at him.

“I told you it wasn’t.”

“Yes, well lots of people have ‘friends’ in my line of work in search of a second opinion.”

He snorted. “How can you tell its not me?”

“This person is bigger through the shoulders than you are, wider set to the pelvis, different shape to the skull. Skeletons are like finger prints when you are familiar with them.”

She suddenly reached forward and stopped the image, and then backed up a few seconds. She zoomed in and then let the video slowly advance.

“What are you looking at?” He asked as her face got very close to the monitor.

She advanced and backed the footage several times, a three second clip of what looked like a section of the spine. Finally, she spoke.

“I’m looking at a tumor.”

“What?”

“Whoever this is, I don’t think he’s got Parkinson’s. He’s got an intramedullary neoplasm.”

“A what?”

“A tumor inside his spinal cord.” She pointed at a tiny dark dot on the screen. “See that? That’s a tumor. It’s small, but it’s inside the spinal cord and it’s pressing on the nerves, which would account for a lot of the symptoms he’s demonstrating – limb weakness, trembling, sexual and urinary dysfunction – and the medications he is on would account for a lot more.”

“Is it cancerous?”

“I don’t know without a biopsy. Can this man still walk?”

Thomas nodded.

“That’s a good sign. Tumors that are malignant tend to grow faster than benign ones. Still it’s no guarantee. But about 65% of these type of tumors tend to be benign.”

“If it’s benign, what happens?”

“Steroid injections can bring down the swelling which will decrease the symptoms. Get him off of the Parkinson’s meds, obviously. Depending on how effective the steroids are, that might be all that is needed. If not, the tumor might be surgically removable. Again, it’s been two years since this scan was taken, so furthers tests would need to be done,” he nodded, “but depending on how involved the actual nerves are, it could possibly be removed.”

“And if it’s cancerous?”

“Radiation and surgical removal. We don’t like opening up the spinal column for obvious reasons, but if it comes down to try it or die, we leave that decision up to the patient.”

“What’s his prognosis if it’s malignant?”

“I wouldn’t even fathom a guess at this point without getting a better look at that tumor. The sooner he acts, the better though.”

Thomas sat and absorbed all of this information. He could give James his life back, but if it was cancerous, maybe it was too late?

“How the hell did the doctor miss this?”

She pointed to the vertebra around the tumor. “See the remottling here?”

“Not really, but pretend that I do.”

“He cracked a vertebra at some point, maybe a sports injury, and it healed slightly incorrectly. There’s a subluxation of the spine at this point, and in the vertebra around it, combined with a slight shift in the place of the muscle attachment fascia in the surrounding tissue,” she was cut off.

“And in normal people speak?”

“He broke his back at some point and it screwed up his spine enough that it looks slightly atypical as it is. That’s caused inflammation in the spinal column which masked the tumor. Combined with him normally being in back pain for a decade and thinking its normal,” she looked through James’s file again, “he didn’t mention it to his doctor which is what we would use as a first clue to go looking for spinal disorders. And these tumors show up much easier on an MRI than a CT, just due to their tissue type. It’s very small. I missed it the first time through, and I’m a specialist in degenerative nervous conditions.”

Thomas shook his head in disbelief.

“Thank you, doctor. You’ve been very helpful.”

“Anytime.” She handed him her business card. “Give this to your friend. I’ll expect to hear from him. I would love to handle his case.”

“I will.”

“He’s lucky to have a friend like you. You might have saved his life this morning.”

Thomas forced a smile. The only thing he could think was, “But at what cost to my own?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was a biology major for a while, but am not actually a medical doctor. Research was performed and any errors are unintentional.


	8. Chapter 8

Luke looked up from his monitor at the young lady standing across the desk from him. She had dark brown hair cropped in a longish pixy cut with a long, layered fringe, and a tan like she had just spent the last week on a beach, which was highlighted by a white halter top and a pair of old faded jeans that fit her like a second skin. She looked completely out of place in the sleek modern offices of Hiddleston Investments.

“Can I help you?” he asked with the utmost professionalism.

“I’m here to see Thomas,” she answered with a smile.

Luke’s internal sensors started clanging. Who was this girl calling his boss by his first name? “Did you have an appointment?”

“No, I just thought I would stop by.”

“I’m sorry, but Mr. Hiddleston has a very busy schedule. He’s meeting with the board right now.”

“Oh, that’s okay. I’ll just wait in his office until he’s done.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but I can’t let you do that.”

She laughed and a hand flew to cover her mouth. “I’m sorry, I just remembered we’ve never met. I’m Cora. Has Thomas mentioned me?”

Luke just about fell over his desk apologizing. “Oh, I’m sorry, ma’am. Yes, ma’am, I’ll show you into his office, and I’ll let him know you’re here. I can’t guarantee that he’ll be out soon, but at least it might rein in his tendency to ramble.” He showed her into Thomas’s office, got her some tea and biscuits, and then sent Thomas a simple text. “Cora’s here.”

Luke managed to keep the laughter to himself as ten minutes later, Thomas all but sprinted through the lobby outside his suite of offices. Luke nodded to the door to Thomas’s private office, and Thomas shot him a grin and went in. Cora was standing on the far side of his spacious office, looking out the window at Paternoster Square while drinking a cup of tea.

She turned around as she heard the door open and smiled at him.

He said the first thing he thought when he saw her. “You cut your hair.”

She laughed. “Yes. What do you think?”

He crossed the room to her and drew her up in a hug. “I don’t think you’ve ever looked more beautiful in your entire life.”

She blushed, rose petals against the golden sheen of her cheeks. “Really?”

“Absolutely.” He brushed his fingers across her fringe, admiring the way the uneven layers fell across her brow and framed her eyes. “Your long hair was beautiful, but it was always the first thing I would see. Now, I see you, and your hair is just an accent. And you, my darling,” he kissed her lightly, “are lovely.”

“Come here and kiss me like you mean it.” She smiled against his lips and he smiled back before complying with her request. He brushed his lips against hers, feather light and then with more intent as she leaned into him. Both of their lips parted slightly, and they traded kisses, suckling and tugging and nipping. Finally, she drew back and took a deep breath. “I just thought I would stop by on my way home from the airport and let you know I was back in person, and give you this.” She pulled a key from her pocket and held it out.

He looked down at the silver key and back up at her. “What does this go to?”

He could see her brow constrict and raise as she tried to smile reassuringly at him.

“My flat. I’m not ready to move in together. I like having my own space, and I need more time before I’m ready to make that kind of a commitment. And I know that we spend every minute you’re not at work together, so it doesn’t really make sense, but I just can’t do it yet.”

He brushed his thumb across her cheek. “That’s fine.”

“Really? You’re not mad?”

“Why would I be mad at you for being honest with me?”

“Because I turned you down.”

He shook his head. “I was worried about you while you were gone. I was worried about _us_ while you were gone. I want you in my life, but I want you there on your terms, not on mine. I would never get mad at you for doing what is best for you. And if you decide, someday, that we should move in together, we will make sure that you have your own space there as well.” He took the key. “Besides, this is the best souvenir anyone has ever brought me back from a trip.”

“Well, it’s no box of paper,” she teased him, “but I thought you might like it.”

“I love it. I’ll treasure it. Always.”

He cupped her face in his hands, the hard key a startling contrast to the gentleness of his fingers. He kissed her again, gentle this time, with a steadiness that seeped into Cora’s bones and made her relax for the first time that day. The entire time she had been gone, her thoughts had raced like greyhounds as she had tried to decide what to do about Thomas’s offer. She loved him but part of her still felt tied to James. He had left her, she hadn’t left him, and even now, over a year after he had left her, she still didn’t feel like she had closed that chapter of her life. Even worse, she didn’t know how to close it. But here, in Thomas’s arms, she felt at peace. He had been there for her for so long, requiring nothing in return, and here he was again, waiting for her to come to him in her own way and in her own time.

She undid the buttons on his suit coat and then slid her arms around his waist, wanting to be as close to him as possible. The crisp cotton of his shirt under her palms contrasted with the cool silk lining against the back of her hands. She ran her hands up and down his back, loving the feel of his firm muscles under her fingers and the shift she could hear in his breathing as she touched him. She nipped at his bottom lip, harder than she had done before. “I swear, if you didn’t have a wall made out of windows, I would take you on your desk right now.”

He pulled back from her and looked at her face. Her lips were wet and parted, her breath coming in audible little pants, her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright and dark. “Come with me.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her into his washroom, locking the door behind him. Without even bothering to turn on a light, their hands were all over each other. He grabbed her top by the bottom hem and pulled it over her head. “No bra, you naughty girl,” he groaned in approval, as he squeezed both of her breasts before starting to tease her nipples with his thumbs.

Cora undid his belt, button and zip and then stripped his trousers and pants down his legs. She sighed as he bent his head and took a nipple into his mouth, tugging at it with his teeth. She grabbed a handful of his curls with one hand and a handful of cock with the other and he moaned over her breast. “Fuck, Cora, you weren’t kidding about ‘right now,’ were you?”

“No.”

Thomas smoothed his hands over her warm skin until he found the button to her jeans. She let go of him and helped him pull them down. He slid his hands back up her thighs until he found her knickers. He dipped his hand between her thighs and pressed against her like a heat seeking missile. Thomas felt her grab at his shoulders as he rubbed the lace against her clit. “Thomas.” Just one simple word and it undid him. A lexicon of want and need and love inscribed in two syllables when she uttered it.

“Everything off.” He pulled her knickers down and she kicked off her sandals and he helped her wriggle out of her jeans. He slid his hands back up her legs in the darkness and grabbed her waist. “Hold on to me,” and then he lifted her, pressing her naked back up against the hardwood of the door. She wrapped her legs around his hips as she slid her hands under his suit coat and across his shoulders. She could feel him positioning himself, the brush of his cock against her slit, the few teasing strokes up and down as he got himself wet with the evidence of her need, and then she felt him right at her entrance.

“Tell me again that you love me,” he murmured against her ear, his breath warm against her skin.

“I love you, Thomas.”

He pushed forward, trying to keep from slamming her against the wall, but he wanted her as much as she wanted him. Each thrust into her wet heat was him reminding himself that she had come back to him, home to him, not to James, but to him.

She tightened her arms around his neck, one hand sliding up to hold his hair, pressing her face against his neck as he thrust repeatedly into her, the heat and friction fusing them together like an explosion.

He groaned as she started kissing his neck, sucking at the soft skin under his jaw. He could feel her moaning more than hear it as the sound was absorbed into his body directly from her mouth.

“Oh god, Thomas, I want to scream,” she pleaded with him.

“Hush, darling, or the whole floor will know,” and he started punctuating his words with relentless thrusts of his cock, “I am fucking your pussy.” The staggered words were met with a whine and he could feel her sink her teeth into the fabric covering his shoulder. Part of his mind wondered if he was going to have to explain bite marks to his cleaner.

The primal feel of him pounding into her, her back flat against the door, wrapped around him in more ways than one, the grunts he was making as he staked his claim in her flesh all combined into one intense pool of heat deep in her stomach. She could start to feel it surge through her body like magma and she cried, “Tom!” into the collar of his jacket as it exploded, overflowing like lava across her skin.

The tremors ran through her, and it brought him down with her, shooting his hot load deep inside her, and they clung to each other, riding out the aftershocks together, chests heaving as they both desperately sought for air after the final sprint.

Finally, slowly, they untangled themselves from each other. He reached a hand to her face and shielded her eyes as he flipped on the light. He slowly took his hand away and they grinned at each other and their rumpled states. “Welcome back, darling.”

She laughed. “I should go away more often if that’s the kind of welcome back I can expect.”

“Please don’t go away.” He took her face in his hands again. “I don’t care if you need your own space, but please don’t run and leave me where I can’t even talk to you. If you need to go, tell me, but please don’t just run.”

Her smile looked like she was fighting back tears. “I get so overwhelmed some times. I see you and I love you, but I feel like I have this huge anchor that’s just holding me in place and not letting me move forward. When we were at the gala, I talked to James. I begged him to let me tell you what happened between us, why he left me, so you could understand how hard it is for me to trust anyone to let me love them the way I want to love someone again.” She shook her head and reached out to touch his tie, stroking it like a child with a lovie. “But he won’t let me. And I already broke one promise to him and I don’t know how to break another one and not hate myself even more.” She took a tissue from the box on the counter and looked up at him. “But I promise you, I won’t run away anymore. I will tell you as much as I can. But if I keep breaking promises, how can you believe me when I say that I love you?”

He hugged her against his chest. “I believe you, my Cora. I believe you and I love you.”

A few minutes later he escorted her from the office. He stood by Luke’s desk and watched her wave and get on the lift.

“She’s very lovely,” Luke said.

“Yes, she is.”

“How old is she?”

“She’ll be thirty one next month.”

“She looks much younger.”

Thomas smiled. “Yes she does. Especially now.” He took a deep breath. “Call James Donovan. Tell him I’m coming over and we need to talk in person and it can’t wait.”

“Very good, sir.” Tom headed back into his office. “One more thing, sir.”

Thomas stopped and looked back at Luke.

“Your fly is undone.”


	9. Chapter 9

Thomas sat in the sumptuous leather arm chair across from James. The office was full of dark wood, leather, and antiques. It reeked old money and power. He sipped his drink, an expensive whiskey that he was too wound up to properly enjoy.

James finally spoke. “What can I do for you? Looking for advice on how to handle Cora?” He smirked as he looked over the edge of his glass at Thomas.

Thomas smiled calmly in return. Part of him wanted to reply that Cora was completely happy with the way he handled her, especially since he could still feel her bite on his shoulder, but he simply took out a business card and put it on the table between them. “You need to call this woman.”

James picked up the card and held it as if it was something distasteful. “Why should I call this Dr. Harrigan?”

Thomas admired the man’s ability to bluff. “I know, James.” He watched as James visibly deflated, sinking back into his chair. James carefully set down his glass, not caring if it left a ring on the beautifully polished table.

 “I was wondering when Cora would break down and tell you.”

“Cora didn’t tell me anything, as much as she wanted to. She treats promises very seriously, even to people who have broken their word to her.”

“I didn’t have a choice.” James sounded as bitter as acid.

“There’s always a choice.” Thomas was calm but firm. “Just because you made the wrong one doesn’t mean it wasn’t a choice.”

James sat forward and took a sip of his drink. Thomas watched as his jaw flexed in anger. “If Cora didn’t tell you, I have to wonder how you got it into your head that I’m sick.”

“I’m not an idiot. When Cora said the grounds for her divorce are covered by a non-disclosure agreement, I got curious as to what could possibly be that damaging.”

“That settlement is sealed,” James retorted.

“Anything that is sealed can be unsealed. You were quite generous, by the way.” Thomas took another swallow of his whiskey. He could tell his calmness was unsettling James more than any anger or jealousy could. Both of them were no strangers to the cut-throat negotiations involved in the financial industry, but this was over something much more important than money.

Thomas’s dismissive attitude rankled James’s soul. “She deserves every bit of that money.” James felt compelled to defend Cora, even if it diminished his own standing in Thomas’s eyes. “But my health wasn’t a matter of record in those documents.”

“Yes, but I know people who know people, and with enough watching and digging, every record can be found.”

James digested that information. “I could have you arrested,” he said. The easiness with which he said it was scarier than any threat would have been.

“You could.” Thomas was still playing this calmly, and the lack of fear he displayed was irritating James. “I’m sure there are a slew of laws that were broken during this investigation. But,” and now Thomas smiled like a predator going in for the kill, “if you come after me in any manner, I’ll make sure the press hears about how you have been misrepresenting your cognitive well-being as the head of an investment institution, and you know much the public loves investment bankers right now. I will burn your company down around your ears the moment you mention my name with anything less than praise and thanksgiving.” His voice was as cold as the ice melting in his glass.

James contemplated Thomas’s face for a moment, and then turned his attention back to the business card in front of him. “Why should I call this Dr. Harrigan?”

“Because you don’t have Parkinson’s; you have a tumor on your spinal cord.”

A mixture of disbelief and hope flashed across James’s face before he could get control of his emotions. “How could you possibly know that?”

“Because Dr. Harrigan found one when she was reviewing your CT scan.”

“You have my CT scan?”

“I also have the results of your last prostate exam, but I thought we would focus on more important matters.” Thomas hated being in this man’s office, and as much as he was getting a sick joy in showing Jamesd how his defenses had failed him, he just wanted to get this over and leave.

“You mean I don’t have Parkinson’s?” Thomas watched as a rainbow of emotions played over James’s face, from the relief of having his life back, to the anger at wasted years and a wasted marriage, to fear at facing a new diagnosis, one that offered a quick death instead of a slow one. He was being rescued by the man that he loathed more than anyone else, and his pride was taking a beating.

“It does not appear that way, no.”

“But I have cancer? Out of the frying pan, into the fire, eh?”

“It might not be cancer. There’s better than even odds that the tumor is benign.”

“Not odds to bet the market on.” James’s voice was quiet.

Thomas felt compelled to reassure him. “But odds enough to bet the rest of your life.”

“So you’re saying that I could be fine.” James looked to Thomas for encouragement.

“There is a good chance that you will be. The sooner you act on this, the better though.”

James sat silently, his head in his hands. Finally he looked up at Thomas. “Why would you tell me this? You have to realize if this is benign, I’m coming after Cora.”

Thomas nodded.

“Then why are you doing this?”

For some reason, he decided to be completely honest. Maybe it was because Cora inspired him to be better than he really was. “Because it hurts her to see you suffering, and I don’t like it when she hurts.”

“Even if it costs you her love?

It was Thomas’s turn to be silent for a moment, and he reflected on what Cora had said that night at the gala. “We’re a lot alike that way. We both want her happy, even if it’s not with us.”

“She’s still in love with me,” James asserted, as much to himself as to Thomas.

“Maybe, maybe not. But she’s still tied to you because of that divorce agreement. Her first loyalty is to you, rather than to herself or her own happiness.”

Those words, that Cora was still loyal to him, caused him to become more confident. “So maybe I won’t tell her I’m not actually sick. Just ask her to come back and she will.”

“You have a week to tell her the truth, or I will. And I’ll make sure she knows that you kept the truth from her.”

“She’s not going to like you snooping around in things that don’t concern you,” James warned.

“It concerns me when you’re the reason she isn’t as happy as she could be.”

James laughed. “Do you think she’ll buy that?”

“I don’t know, but as mad as she’ll be at me, I’ll also be the person who saved your life, and you’ll be the bastard who lied to her.” He put his drink down on the table and stood. “One week, and then I tell her. The ball’s in your court.”


	10. Chapter 10

For five days Thomas had waited. For James to call, for Cora to leave, for something to happen. As much as he was waiting, it still caught him by surprise when it did. He came home late to Cora’s flat. Instead of being in her studio, he found her in the bedroom looking at herself critically in the mirror. She kept fussing with her hair, tucking pieces behind her ears and them pulling them back out. She finally growled and ran both of her hands vigorously through her hair and yelled, “I give up!”

“What’s going on, darling?”

She looked at him in the mirror. “Why did I ever chop my hair off?”

He walked up behind her, rested his hands on her hips and smiled at her in the mirror. “Because you decided to be even more gorgeous than you already were?”

She rolled her eyes but smiled at him.

“Are we going somewhere?” he asked as she put her earrings in. His eyes roamed admiringly over her figure. She was wearing a little dress the color of amber. The strapless style showed off her shoulders and newly exposed neck and he took advantage of the opportunity to stroke his fingers down the side of her throat and across her collarbone, smiling as she shuddered.

She bit her bottom lip and turned to look up at him through the hair that was falling in her eyes. “I’m meeting James for dinner.”

“Oh.” He let go of her.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“How am I looking at you?”

“Like I just kicked a puppy.” She stood on tiptoe and kissed him on the chin. “He called and said we had to discuss some things regarding the divorce settlement, and asked if I wanted to go to dinner to talk.”

Thomas sat down on the foot of her bed. “So, where are you two going?”

“Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester.”

Thomas raised an eyebrow. “Wow. He’s pulling out all the stops, isn’t he?”

She came over and stood between his knees, running her hands through his curls. “Are you jealous, my dear?”

“Maybe.” She looked surprised that he admitted it. “You’re going to get those delectable French pastries, and I’m going to be stuck eating ice cream out of the carton with a spoon.”

She smiled and tapped him on the nose with one finger. “I can show you where I keep the ice cream scoop.”

“No.” He sighed dramatically. “I will need all the ice cream to console me as my love goes and gambols in the,” he started laughing, “in what does one gambol?”

“I’m not even sure what gamboling is,” she confessed as he wrapped his arms around her waist and rested his cheek against her stomach.

“I love you, Cora.”

“I know. And I love you, too.” She bent over and kissed him on the top of his head. “And I’ll bring you back a pudding.”

He hugged her tighter. He knew what tonight was about, even if she didn’t. He couldn’t help but worry that this was the last time he would get to hold her. “When are you supposed to meet him?”

“In about thirty minutes.”

“You need to go, then.”

“I’ll come back, I promise.”

“And you keep your promises.”

“I try.” She blinked in surprise. “Love, why are you crying?” She brushed away a tear that had fallen on his cheek.

“Just this horrible feeling that you are going to go back to him, and the happiest year of my life will be over.”

“Darling, he wouldn’t let me come back if I tried.” She kissed him on the top of his head.

He knew she thought that she was reassuring him, but it only fed the snake of fear coiling in his belly. He stood and hugged her one more time, and she lifted her face to him for a final kiss. “I want one with chocolate in it.”

“I’ll see what they have.”

He walked her to the lift and kissed her one more time. “I love you.”

The reassuring smile on her face faded as the doors to the lift closed. Did it count as lying that she didn’t tell Thomas that the Dorchester was where they had made love the first time, and where they had spent their wedding night? The mere fact that James had suggested dinner there meant he was up to something. He wasn’t so cruel as to just bring their past up just to rub it in her face.

She fretted all the way to the restaurant. James was already at the table waiting for her, and he stood as she approached and kissed her on the cheek.

“That’s a different perfume,” he said, as they sat down.

“Do you like it?”

“It’s more citrusy than you normally wear. I always thought you preferred floral scents.”

“You preferred floral scents on me.”

“Ah. So, Thomas picked this one for you?”

“I picked it for myself.”

“And your hair? Did you do that by yourself as well?”

Her spine stiffened in irritation. “Tell me, James, did you invite me to dinner to insult me, or is there something else you wanted to talk about?” This pettiness was so out of character for him. She understood that it couldn’t be easy seeing her move on with her life, but he seemed not himself.

“I’m sorry. Of course. But let’s order first.”

They were half way through their entrees when James said, “I guess I should tell you why I asked you to meet me.”

Cora looked at him intently. “Go ahead.”

“I’ve been seeing a new doctor and it turns out I don’t have Parkinson’s.”

The clatter of her fork dropping onto the plate seemed impossibly loud and heads turned to look at them.

“What do you mean you don’t have Parkinson’s? What about the tremors? What about the loss of balance?”

“It turns out I have a tumor in my spinal cord.”

“You have cancer?” The last few moments had given her emotional whiplash, and she struggled to cope with the relief and now sadness flooding through her body.

“No, I got the biopsy results back this morning, and it’s benign. But it’s been growing and as it gets bigger, it puts more pressure on my nerves and that’s why I’m having all the problems.”

“So, can they take it out?”

“Yes. It’s going to be a complicated surgery, and it will take some recovery time, but the outlook is for a full recovery.”

Cora sat in stunned silence. All she could think of was how much her life had been affected by a misdiagnosis. It made her angry. “How under heaven did your doctors miss this?”

“Remember when I broke that vertebra playing rugby?” She nodded. “Well, it healed funny, and I’m so used to my back hurting from it that I didn’t mention back pain as a symptom. So they didn’t spend much time examining the spinal column. And they just missed it. It was tiny two years ago. It’s gotten bigger. That’s why my symptoms are getting worse.”

“That’s what you get for being the big macho type. You break your back and can’t even admit to a doctor that it hurts.” She laughed. “I’m so happy for you, James. You’ll get your life back.”

He leaned forward and covered her hand in his. “That’s why I invited you to dinner. To dinner here. I want a new start with you. Come back to me.” His smile was as gentle and loving as she remembered.

“I’m with Thomas now. You know that.”

“He would want you to be happy if he really loves you. And you know I can make you happy.”

“Thomas makes me happy as well. And I would hurt him so badly if I left him now.”

“How can you compare what you two have to what we had? We were together for a decade. You two have been together for a few months.”

Cora felt the need to finally tell James all of the truth, all of what had happened the last painful year of their marriage. She looked down at the chateaubriand going cold on her plate. “I’ve had feelings for Thomas for longer than that.”

James sat back, the smile fading from his face. “What do you mean?”

“You got so cold and distant when you got sick, and I couldn’t reach out to anyone I knew for support because you insisted on it being kept a secret. We just started chatting about nothing at all when we would bump into each other at different events, and then we started texting on a regular basis and I ended up developing feelings for him.”

His eyes hardened. “Did you sleep with him?”

“Once.” She couldn’t meet his eyes. “About a month before we went to the Mediterranean. I didn’t see him after then until I had moved out, and even then, that was just in passing. We didn’t start dating until after the divorce had been finalized for three months.”

“I can’t believe you whored around on your sick husband.”

She felt like she had been slapped. “I didn’t whore around.” She had to keep herself from snarling. “I had sex once, with someone I cared about deeply. And why can’t you believe it? That was your reason for divorcing me, wasn’t it? Because I needed something I couldn’t get from you anymore. So, you were right. As much as I fought you leaving, your argument was true. I wasn’t strong enough to deal with your illness on a daily basis. So you kicked me out. And I ended up in a good place because of that.”

“You’re telling me you’re going to stay with him?”

“I’m saying that I’m not sure that you really want to be my partner. You want me to make your life easier. I put up with a lot of things I hated because I loved you and I thought that was the way being a corporate wife worked, but I’m happy now. I have someone who loves me. All of me. Not just the parts that make his life easier. And he thinks I’m a person with interests of my own, and that those interests and goals are important, and not just something I can play around with when I have some free time. And when we host clients we take them to nice restaurants instead of expecting me to cook and cater to the needs of people I actively dislike.”

He shook his head in disbelief. “You’ve built me up to be this sadistic tyrant in your head but I worshipped the ground you walked on, Cora, and you know it.”

“Yes, but you only gave me the smallest piece of ground. You fell in love with a nineteen year old. And I thought I had to stay that person for you. So I did. But I can’t be her again.”

He was suddenly apologetic. “Then come back. We’ll figure it all out together. We can make this work, I know we can.” He reached out for her hand but she pulled it away.

“I’m sorry, James. You love the life we had together. You love always being the center of attention and making the biggest donation and appearing in the society pages. I did all the stuff because I had to, and I wanted you to be happy. But I don’t remember you ever asking what would make me happy.”

“You never said you were unhappy.”

She sighed. “You never listened when I did.”

“When did you tell me? What didn’t I hear?”

“I would tell you I wanted to take an art class, and you would say, ‘That’s nice, but are you really going to have time for that if you are chairing those three charity dinners and planning the annual gala for the museum?’ and I would say, ‘I’d love to go to France and take a week-long cooking course with Talie,’ and you would respond, ‘Oh, but I need you here. The executive of some random company is coming in and we need to entertain him.’ Everything I wanted was always subordinated to what you needed of me. And then I said, I want to have a baby, and you said, ‘Maybe in a few years. I need to consolidate my hold on CEO over my brothers.’”

“Well, of course. I needed you to help me be successful.”

“But what about you helping _me_ be successful? You need someone else, James. I was willing for so long to give up what I wanted to make you successful, but money can only heat your body. It can’t heat your soul. We’ve always had an amazing physical connection, but when you denied me that, when you started pulling away from me, I started to realize how much more I needed out of my marriage. You need to be in charge. Of everything. And I’m not willing to just be an employee with an extra-special benefits package.”

“I can change, Cora.”

“Really?” Her voice was ripe with disbelief. She started ticking things off on her fingers. “You don’t like my hair. You don’t like my perfume. You think my art is a cutesy little hobby. You may have said all those things because we weren’t together and you were lashing out, but if you really loved me, you wouldn’t be so threatened by the person I became when you weren’t around to control me, to shape me into what you needed from me.”

“Cora, I didn’t know how you felt. You never told me. Please, give me a chance to show you I can make you happy body and soul.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a key and pushed it across the table to her. “This is the key to the penthouse suite here. I booked it for us, to celebrate a new beginning. I love you, Cora. Letting you go was the biggest mistake of my life. Please let me fix it.”

She flagged down a passing waiter. “Please box up two puddings for me. Make sure one of them is chocolate.”He nodded and scurried off with the order. “It was the biggest mistake of _your_ life, James. While it was the most painful event in my life, I honestly don’t think I would change it at this point. You were a good husband to the girl I was. I’m not sure you would be a good husband to the woman I am.”

“Cora, I’m begging you.” He had tears in his eyes. “Please, let me show you I can be. You know when I set my mind to a goal I can accomplish it. You are my goal, Cora. I want you back.”

“I’m sorry, James. You can’t make me come back to you.”

“You said you still loved me. Was that a lie?” He looked devastated.

“I still love you, James. You are a good man, and you were my husband and you never raised your voice or a hand to me. You did the best you knew how to be a good husband. But I’m not in love with you anymore. I want something different, something it’s not in your temperament to provide. And it would make you miserable trying to be someone you aren’t.”

“God, you sound like every clichéd romantic comedy you made me sit through.” She had never seen him so bitter.

She smiled wanly. “Sometimes there’s a reason that things are clichéd. It’s because they are universal. A relationship should make both people equally happy. Ours didn’t. I’m sorry. I’m glad you’re going to get your life back, but it isn’t going to include me.”

The waiter brought out a cake box, wrapped with a beautiful ribbon. “Here you go, ma’am.”

Cora took the box and stared at it, fiddling nervously with the ribbon. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize until I was on my way over here how much I was dreading this conversation, and I knew it was because I was going to have to tell you no. I knew that if you asked me to come back, and I was pretty sure that you were going to, I didn’t want to go back to the way things were.”

James looked devastated. “Cora, please. I don’t know how I am going to keep going without you. You are my heart.”

“You should have thought about that before you broke your vows to me.”

“How did I break my vows? I got sick. That’s not breaking a vow, especially compared to fucking someone else.”

Cora took a deep breath and fought to force down the anger rising in her throat like bile. “We promised to stay together in sickness and in health. It wasn’t just that I promised to stay with you when you got sick. It’s that you also promised to stay with me when you got sick. We were supposed to be together, though the hard times, and yes, you being sick was hard on me. But that doesn’t mean that you were supposed to give up on me.” She couldn’t fight back the tears welling up in her eyes. “You could have found me help. Let me talk to a therapist. But your fear of anyone finding out, of your image being hurt, overrode your responsibility to place me before all others. So excuse me if I don’t put a lot of faith in your ability to change. You couldn’t do it to save your marriage in the first place. Why should I believe you would do it now?”

“I won’t let you go back to Thomas.” His jaw set in determination. For some reason, Cora noticed that James’s jaw went forward when he was angry, while Thomas’s went to the side.

“Oh, so _that’s_ what this is about. This isn’t about wanting me back. It’s about not wanting someone else to have me.”

“You’re mine, Cora. You’ve always been mine.” His voice dropped and took on the husky quality that had always melted her resolve. “You loved it when I called you ‘mine.’ You loved feeling my weight on you, pressing you into the bed. I know you in ways he never will.”

This time, however, his voice just left her angry at his blatant manipulation. “Just because I lost my virginity to you doesn’t give you some special ownership over me,” she hissed. “I’m mine. And I can share myself with whomever I choose. And right now, that doesn’t include you.” She stood. “Goodnight, James. I hope your surgery goes well.”

His hand darted out and caught her wrist. “This isn’t over.”

“Yes, it is. Now let go of me before I cause a scene.”

“You wouldn’t do that. You’re too polite.” His handsome face twisted into a sneer. “Your biggest fear in life is being rude, and think how rude it would be to disturb all these people enjoying their dinner.”

She picked up his glass of water and threw it in his face. He let go of her, gasping in shock. “The red wine would have stained, and _that_ would have been rude. Thank goodness there was water so easily at hand. Don’t forget to leave a generous tip, dear.” She took her box of puddings and her handbag and made a hasty escape. She got out of the restaurant and leaned against the wall for a moment, catching her breath. She couldn’t believe James had manhandled her like that in public. She couldn’t believe a lot of what had just happened.

She made her way to the entrance to the hotel, and asked the doorman to fetch a cab. As she was waiting James caught up with her.

“Cora, you have to talk to me.”

“I don’t have to do anything, James.”

He grabbed her by her shoulders and made her face him. “You love me. You know you do. I understand why you’re mad and if you need some time to calm down, that’s fine. But I will get you back. We belong together.”

“James, let go. You’re scaring me.”

“Ma’am, your cab is here.”

“Come on, let’s go for a ride.”

“No, you are not getting in the cab with me.” She wrenched away from his grip, wincing as she felt him fight to hold onto her.

She slid in to the back seat of the cab, and he tried to keep her from shutting the door.  “Cora, I’m not done talking to you.”

“Yes, you are.” She yanked on the door, and the doorman pulled on James’s arm.

“Sir, the lady has asked you leave her alone.”

James whirled to face the man and Cora slammed the door shut and yelled, “Drive!”

The cabbie quickly accelerated away from the curb. Cora watched out the rear window as James got in the next cab. With a sinking heart, she watched as his cab followed hers through several turns. She took her mobile from her purse.

Thomas answered at the first ring. “Cora, how was your evening?”

“Not good.”

“What’s wrong, darling?” He could hear the panic in her voice.

“You were right. James asked me to come back to him. He didn’t like it when I said no, and he grabbed me a few times and he’s following my cab home. I think he’s going to do something when I get to our building and I’m scared.”

“I’m calling the police.”

“No, just come down and meet me, please? He won’t do anything if you’re there.”

“I’m on my way. Are you sure you don’t want me to call the police?”

“No, please. He’s just hurt and he doesn’t know what he’s doing. He just needs to go home, not get arrested.”

“If you say so.” He sounded reluctant.

Thomas went down to the lobby and explained to the security guard at the front desk what was going on.  He came and stood right outside the front doors and loomed conspicuously. Thomas went straight to the curb and waited for her to appear.

When her cab pulled up, he opened her door and helped her out and then thrust a handful of bills at the driver. He wrapped his arm around her and noticed a series of raw scratch marks across one shoulder and down the upper part of her arm. “Did he do that to you?”

Cora had never seen him so furious. His cheekbones stood out in stark relief as he clenched his jaw. “Let’s get you inside before he shows up.” They were almost to the door when James arrived.

“Cora, stop.”

She stopped and turned around. “Go away, James. I don’t want you here.”

He ran towards her, but the security guard stepped in between James and his goal. “Sir, I am going to ask you to leave.”

Thomas escorted Cora into the building. Part of him wanted to beat James into a bloody pulp for daring to leave a mark on Cora, but he knew it wouldn’t help matters. The best thing he could do was to get Cora away from the situation.

They got in the lift and he punched the button for his flat. “Mine has better security than yours,” he said tersely. He locked the door behind them and then activated the alarm system. She seemed lost standing dazed in his foyer like it was someplace she had never been. “What can I do for you, Cora? Do you want to talk? Do you want a drink? Do you want to watch _Ladyhawke_?”

She looked up at him and her eyes seemed a little unfocused. She held out the cake box to him. “I brought you pudding.” And then she started to cry. He took the box from her hand and set it on the entry table and then scooped her up in his arms and carried her to the couch. He sat down and cradled her against him as she sobbed, and he stroked a hand lovingly down her arm, wishing he could erase the marks that James had left on her. Thomas knew the scratches on her skin would heal much more quickly than the damage James had done to her heart.


	11. Chapter 11

Cora woke the next morning in Thomas’s bed though he wasn’t there. She was wearing one of his t-shirts over her knickers though she didn’t remember changing clothes. She wandered out into his kitchen to look for something to eat. He had become much better about keeping food in the house since they had started dating. She opened the fridge and looked inside and blinked back tears when she saw the cake box still tied with its ribbon. She took out a few eggs and some butter and was about to start making herself breakfast when she heard her phone ring.

She didn’t recognize the number. “Hello?”

“Can I speak to Cora Donovan, please?”

“This is her.”

“Hello, my name is Dr. Harrigan. I’m treating your husband for his spinal tumor.”

“He’s my ex-husband. What can I do for you?”

“Well, Ms. Donovan, we have a problem. Apparently you still are listed as his medical power-of-attorney according to his lawyer. James was arrested last night for assault. He seems to have had a severe reaction to the steroids we gave him to reduce the swelling around the tumor so it would be safer to remove. He’s demonstrating aggressive behavior and extreme paranoia. He seems to believe that a Thomas Hiddleston arranged for his fake diagnosis with Parkinson’s disease as an attempt to destroy him professionally and personally. He is also convinced that this Mr. Hiddleston stole his wife and has bugged his offices and home to steal confidential business secrets.”

Cora sank to the floor of the kitchen, the tile under her thighs as cold as the chill that ran down her spine.

“I tried explaining to him that Mr. Hiddleston was the one who actually discovered that he didn’t have Parkinson’s disease, but he won’t listen right now.”

“Wait, what?”

“Mr. Hiddleston is the one who brought me your ex-husbands medical files to look at when I discovered the tumor.”

“How did Mr. Hiddleston get James’s medical files?”

“I assume James gave them to him.”

Cora snorted derisively. “No, that never would have happened.” She sighed. “Regardless, what do you need from me?”

“We can’t just take him off the steroids because they have to be tapered down for safety. We need to get that tumor out while the steroids are still in his system, but he can’t consent to the surgery himself. We were hoping that you would come down to the hospital and give consent for the operation.”

“Is this something he agreed to earlier?”

“Yes, it is. We actually already had the operation scheduled for three hours from now.”

She sighed. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Thank you.”

All thoughts of breakfast discarded, she grabbed her purse and ran out the door to the lift. She was so furious at Thomas and heartbroken about James that she didn’t even care that she didn’t have on jeans. Thomas’s shirt was long enough that it at least made her decent. As soon as she got into her flat, she stripped off Thomas’s shirt and threw it as hard as she could. How could he have invaded James’s privacy like that? How could he have ignored her telling him that it wasn’t his business? She knew the kind of precautions James took against having personal information divulged. Thomas must have spent a lot of time and money to get to that medical file and who knew what he had done before this.

A quick shower and she was ready to go. At the last minute she put on some of the perfume that James had bought her. The scent brought back so many memories. On the cab ride to the hospital, she kept turning over all those recollections in her head. Of the surprise vacations, of the hours he would spend wandering art museums with her, watching her more than the art; of long Sunday mornings in bed, doing the crossword together and ending up with toast crumbs in uncomfortable places. The feel of him on top of her, his breath coming in deep pants that brushed against her skin, making sure she always got her pleasure before he took his. The long sleeved shirt she wore covered the scratches on her arm, but in her mind, they stood out in stark contrast against the years of tenderness she had always experienced at James’s hands. She couldn’t help but wonder how last night would have gone if he hadn’t been reacting to all the steroids pumping through his system. She knew he had seemed not himself, and now she knew why. She also started to realize that maybe she could have been better about communicating what she had needed. She had never really told James she was unhappy, and the experience of the divorce had definitely colored her view of the years before. She had aged, but she hadn’t really grown up during her marriage, and her own willingness to stay on a comfortable plateau was at least partly her fault. He had been nothing but loving and supportive. Maybe he had been selfish when it came to putting his priorities first, but maybe, just maybe, he had learned as much about himself in their time apart as she had.

At the hospital, she found his room with no problem. He looked so small laying there in a hospital gown that it caused her to stop in the doorway from surprise. She gasped a little and he heard her and turned his head, opening his eyes and saw her. “Cora.” He smiled, and then he started crying.

“Oh, baby.” She sat on the edge of his bed and took one of his large hands in hers. “Don’t cry. I’m here.”

“I’m so sorry for last night. I don’t know what came over me.” The tears rolled down his cheeks.

She smiled at him. “Apparently the steroids did.” She brushed her thumb over the back of his hand, noticing small scrapes across his knuckles. “Did you hit someone?”

“Your security guard.”

Her smile was sad. “Remind me to triple his holiday bonus.”

“Cora, you have to forgive me. I never wanted to hurt you.” She had never seen him like this, begging for something from her.

“I know, darling. That wasn’t you last night. You’ve never even hinted at being that person before.”

“I love you so much.”

“I know.”

“Please come home to me.”

She took a deep breath. “We’ll talk about this when you’re feeling better, okay? The nurse said they have you sedated and those steroids are still in your system.”

“Will you stay with me until they take me?”

“Of course.” She smiled and kissed him on his forehead.

He tugged at her hand and she smiled, knowing what he wanted. She stretched out on her side next to him on his surgical bed. He wrapped his arm around her as she rested her head on his chest, and she smiled at the familiar feel of his lips brushing against her hair. “You look good with short hair.”

“You’re just saying that.”

“No, it brings out your eyes.”

She didn’t say anything, but just snuggled closer into his side, reassurance and forgiveness flowing into him from her touch like osmosis. James woke her when the anesthesiologist arrived. Cora had fallen asleep, lulled into slumber by the steady beating of James’s heart and the familiar comfort of his body cradling her.

“How long have I been asleep?” she mumbled as she sat up, shoving her fringe back out of her face.

“About half an hour. I imagine last night wasn’t very restful for you.”

“Or you.” She brushed his hair back. She knew he hadn’t slept. She wondered what he had been thinking about while she did.

The next forty-five minutes were spent reading forms, initialing and signing papers, and holding James’s hand. In the final lull before he was taking to the operating room, he squeezed her hand. “Will you be here when I get back?”

“Of course.”

“I’m scared.”

She knew how dearly it cost him to admit that. “You’re going to be fine. There won’t be any complications. And I’ll be here when you get back.”

“Promise?”

“I promise. Speaking of which, why aren’t your brothers here?”

He looked down guiltily.

“Seriously, you didn’t tell them you’re having surgery?”

He shook his head without looking at her.

“Why not?”

“We got in a fight when we divorced. They never knew I had Parkinson’s and couldn’t understand why I was divorcing you and they both assumed that I had cheated on you.”

“You should have told them.”

“And watch them try and get the board to remove me? No. I couldn’t give them that kind of ammunition against me.” He looked away from her. They had had this argument before.

“Your brothers love you.”

“I can’t risk it.”

“I’m calling them while you’re in surgery.” Her tone brooked no argument.

“Cora, don’t.”

“No. You need to stop being stupid. They are going to cut open your spine and you need to realize that this is going to take time to recover from. You’re going to have to take time off work and they are your CFO and COO and they are going to need to know what is going on to keep the company running while you are in bed.”

He stared at her slightly surprised. “I don’t think you’ve ever scolded me like that before.”

“Well,” she looked down suddenly uncomfortable, “I’ve changed a lot in the last year.”

“I like it.”

Her eyes flew to his face, and she could tell he was serious. “Really?”

“Yes. I would say it’s cute when you get feisty, or it’s hot when you get angry, but it’s not just that. You’re powerful. That’s different. And exciting. Not many people are willing to stand up to me. You didn’t used to stand up to me.”

She felt a wave of grief wash over her. “Maybe we wouldn’t be in this situation if I had.”

“Maybe not.”

A nurse came in. “We’re going to take you to the operating room now, James.”

He looked at Cora. “You’ll be here when I get back?”

“I promise.”

She leaned down to kiss him on the cheek but he moved his face at the last moment and she kissed his lips. He wrapped his free hand around the back of her neck when she didn’t jerk away and held her while they kissed.  It amazed her how different the same action could be when done with someone else.  James’s lips were fuller than Thomas’s and softer. They were gentle against hers, seeking for a promise that she couldn’t make. The smell of his cologne lingered on her skin, the familiar touch of his lips, his strong fingers on the back of her neck – everything combined and overwhelmed her. What was she doing?

She pulled back shakily. “I’ll be here when you get back.” She watched them roll James out of the room and then pulled out her mobile. She called Thomas’s office. Luke answered the phone.

“Hi, this is Cora. I need you to give Thomas a message for me when he gets back.”

“He’s in his office right now if you want to talk to him.”

“No, I think it is best if you just give him a message. Tell him I’m at Royal London Hospital. I’m fine, but he needs to get down here. Let me give you the room number.” She went out in the hall and looked at the sign next to the door and read him the number. “I have other people to call, so my phone will be busy, but I need him down here.”

She hung up and called Joseph. His secretary answered the phone. She managed to convince the woman, who hadn’t worked there when Cora had been married to James, to put her through to her boss.

“Joey, it’s Cora.”

“Cora, love, what’s got you coming round after all this time?”

“James is in the hospital.”

“What? Is he okay? I mean obviously not if he’s in the hospital. What happened? Are you okay?”

“Joey, calm down. He’s having surgery to remove a tumor. It’s not cancer,” she continued, anticipating his next question, “but it’s on his spine. He needs you and Jack but is too stubborn to admit it.”

“The big idiot. Has he already gone into surgery?”

“Yes. He’ll be there for the next few hours, but if you and Jack could come be here when he comes out, I think it would really mean a lot to him.”

“Of course. I’ll finish up a few things and then be there. How did you get roped into this? I didn’t think you two were talking.”

“It’s a long story, and we’ll have plenty of time to catch up. I should probably call Jack, unless you want to.”

“Would you call him? That way I can finish up quicker. In fact, I can transfer you.”

“That would be lovely. Thank you.”

“And Cora? I’m glad you’re back. James hasn’t been the same since you two split up.”

“I’m not really back, Joey. Not for ever.”

“Well, at least you two are talking. That’s an improvement.”

She sighed. “Can you put me through to Jack?”

“Sure.”

The phone rang a few times before Jack picked up.

“What is it now?” Jack sounded frustrated.

“Jack?”

“Who is this?”

“It’s Cora.”

“Why are you in Joseph’s office?”

“I’m not, he just transferred me.”

He suddenly sounded much happier. “What are you up to, muffin?”

Cora laughed. “I’m never going to lose that nickname, am I?”

“Not if I have anything to say about it. What brings you back around?”

“Your brother is an idiot.”

“Which one?”

“Definitely James, I’m still reserving judgment on Joey.”

She could practically hear Jack rolling his eyes. “What’s James done now? It can’t be any stupider than him divorcing you.”

“He’s currently in an operating room having his spinal column cut open.”

“What? Is this a joke?”

“Jack, you’re the class clown, not me.”

“What in the name of all that is holy is going on?”

“He has a tumor on his spinal cord. It’s being removed. And your brother is too much of an idiot to admit that he’s not going to be back to work on Monday, so I’m calling in the cavalry.”

There was a long pause. “He’s lucky to have you looking out for him.”

“Just get down here when you can. He needs you and Joey and he’ll never admit it himself.”

“We’ll be there soon. And muffin?”

“Yes?”

“I’m glad you’re back.”

“See you soon.”

She sat on the uncomfortable vinyl chair in the empty room, her head in her hands. She couldn’t believe how quickly she had gotten sucked back into the Donovan family. James and his brothers were all born within three years of each other, and were practically identical in size and looks, except for hair color. James was the blond, Joey had hair that was so dark it was almost black, and Jack was the ginger. They had been slotted into roles fairly early in their life as well – James was the oldest and the most responsible; it was always assumed that he would take over Donovan Investments from his father, and he had done his best to fulfill those expectations. Joey was the peacemaker and spent a lot of the time getting his brothers and father to work together. And Jack was the youngest, the funniest, and the one who had always been spoiled by his mother. The three Donovan boys were a force of nature when they worked together, but they could fight just as fiercely against each other as they fought united against anyone else.

And now both of them thought she was back, and she had kissed James, and Thomas was going to show up as well as both of James’s brothers, and there weren’t enough chairs for all of them and their egos and she wondered if she could just walk down to Neurology while she was waiting and see if they could check to see if she still had a brain and if it was working.

She was mentally berating herself when Jack knocked on the door. “Hey muffin, want some company?”

She looked up to see Jack and Joey filling the doorway. She smiled and stood up. Jack enveloped her in a hug. “You coping alright?”

“I’ve had better days, honestly, and frankly I’m starving. I haven’t even had coffee today.”

“Your wish, fair maiden, is my command.” He bowed theatrically over her hand. “Need anything else?”

“We could probably use some more chairs if you happen to find any roaming the halls.”

“I shall see what I can scavenge.”

He swept back out of the room. Joey looked at her. “Now that the puppy is out fetching, how are you really doing?”

“You have to take care of him, Joseph. Best case scenario, he’s looking at five days in the hospital and three months of physical therapy. Worst case is up to a year. I can’t do that. He made it very clear that I’m not his wife anymore, and you can’t make me be here for him all that time. I won’t do it.” She could hear the hysteria rising in her own voice.

“We won’t make you, Cora. He made his bed, and now he has to lie in it. Without you there beside him.”

She flashed back to the nap she had taken in his arms that morning and closed her eyes to fight back tears. He had felt so good and comfortable wrapped around her.

“I’m not being vindictive or anything, but I just can’t be here every day for him like I was. I would lose myself in caring for him. It’s taken me so long to get over him, and it would be so easy to just let all that work fall by the wayside and let him hold me again.”

Joey wrapped his arms around her. “Come here, darling.”

“I’ll get snot all over your suit.”

“It can be dry cleaned. And besides, Trevor hates this suit. He would thank you for a reason to burn it.”

She smiled and leaned against him. He was so similar to James that it was almost as if he was the one embracing her. “Your brother is an idiot, you know that right?”

Joseph laughed. “Yes. Brilliant, but a complete idiot.” There was a long pause. “Why did you two get divorced?”

“What did James tell you?”

“Irreconcilable differences.”

“That’s all?”

“He can be very closed-mouth when he chooses.”

“Why don’t we wait until Jack gets back and that way I only have to tell the story once.”

“Okay.” He continued to hold her, and Cora relaxed into the hug knowing that there were no expectations or obligations that went along with it.

Jack finally came back with coffee, muffins (he was almost giggling he was so proud of himself) and then went out in the hall and started stealing chairs. “It’s amazing you all aren’t in prison with him as your CFO,” she mentioned to Joey, and got a burst of laughter in return.

They all settled themselves with coffee and muffins.

“Okay, so questions.”

“What the hell is going on?” Jack asked.

“Do you have something more specific than that?”

“Not really.”

She rolled her eyes. “Your brother has a tumor in his spinal cord. It’s benign. They are removing it right now. He has a five-ten day in hospital recovery period, a potential stay at a patient recovery center, and somewhere between three months and a year of physical therapy ahead of him.”

Both brothers were silent.

“Why didn’t he tell us? Why did he go to you instead of his family?” Joseph asked. She could sense the hurt in his voice. She didn’t want to think about why it hurt her so much that she was no longer considered family.

“He didn’t go to me. I still hold his medical power of attorney, and he couldn’t consent to the surgery himself today, so I was called to come in and sign.”

“Why couldn’t he consent?” Jack asked.

She sighed. “Your brother got arrested last night for assaulting a security guard. He had a really bad reaction to the steroids they put him on to reduce the swelling around the tumor and got violent and paranoid and it was judged that he wasn’t capable of giving informed consent while still on the steroids.”

“Is he going to face charges?” Jack asked.

“I’ll talk to the security guard later today and see if I can get him to drop the complaint.”

“Oh, you already know who it is? Have you been to the police already this morning?”

“He’s the guard on my building. James was coming after me.”

Jack and Joey both looked at her in shock.

“I’m going to repeat my question from earlier,” Jack finally said. “What in the hell is going on, Cora?”

“What _is_ going on, Cora?” Thomas asked from the doorway. “You leave a message with Luke telling me you’re in the hospital and I run down here and find you all comfortable and cozy sipping coffee?”

“Thomas, you know Joseph and Jack Donovan, James’s brothers.” She could hear the corporate wife formality falling into place like a mask. She could see the anger flare in Thomas’s eyes from across the room.

“You two better keep that bastard away from her.”

Jack and Joseph leapt to their feet, and Cora said, “Thomas, you need to shut up.”

“Go ahead and show them what he did to you last night, Cora. You’ve got bruises and scratch marks up your arm.”

The brothers looked at her uncertainly. “Did he hurt you?” Jack asked.

“It wasn’t his fault,” Cora insisted.

“What the hell do you mean, ‘it wasn’t his fault’?” Thomas snapped at her.

“If you would shut up like I told you I will explain,” she yelled back at him.

She could see his nostrils flaring, his jaw grinding to the side. “Now sit down.” He did as he was told, moving the chair away from the brothers before he did so. “Would you like a muffin?”

“I’ll pass.” His tone could have frozen the Amazon in its course.

“Now that we’re all here,” she started and was interrupted by Joey.

“Why is he here?”

“Because he’s my…boyfriend, I guess, for lack of a better term.”

Jack and Joseph both looked him up and down. They sat up a bit straighter and leaned forward in their chairs. She could sense the hostility rolling off of them intensify until it hung like a bruise over the room.

She looked at Thomas, who was staring at her in confusion. “You guess?”

“I’m not twelve. You’re not a boy. You’re more than a friend, less than a husband, and lover just sounds squicky. I could introduce you as ‘the person I fuck on a regular basis’ but that seems a bit crude.”

“Why am I suddenly the bad guy here? I’m not the one who left you with bruises or who broke your heart.”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you go ask Dr. Harrigan. I found out today what good friends you two are.”

He sat back in his chair. “Ah.”

“Okay, third time’s the charm. What the fuck is going on?” Jack interrupted.

“A little over two years ago, James was diagnosed with early onset-Parkinson’s disease.”

She watched as Jack and Joseph both got identical gob smacked looks on their faces.

“He’s got,” Joey started, but Cora waved him to silence.

“I’m going to tell my story, and you’re all going to be quiet, and when I’m done you can ask questions. Okay?”

They nodded, cowed into subservience by the ferocious look in her eyes. She started again, recounting the entire story, including her affair with Thomas. She teared up as she recounted the fight between her and James, and James walking out the door. She went quickly through the divorce, the conditions placed on her silence, and then her beginning romance with Thomas.

“At some point, Thomas got ahold of James’s medical records and had Dr. Harrigan review them for some reason. She noticed the tumor on the CT scan. It seems,” she looked at Thomas, “that he passed this information on to James, who is now undergoing surgery to remove the tumor. Of course, the pre-surgical treatment involves steroid injections to reduce the inflammation to make surgical resection of the tumor easier. He asked me to dinner last night and asked me to take him back after he had recovered from the surgery. I declined. He was having a bad reaction to the steroids, and ended up becoming paranoid, delusional, and violent, and tried to restrain me.”

Thomas started to say something, but she looked at him with such anger in her eyes that he stopped.

“I had noticed during the dinner that he seemed off, more aggressive and angry than normal. I thought it was nervousness at the time, but I think it was just the medication. I don’t blame him for what he did last night. I’m asking you not to blame him either.”

The three men looked at each other, expressions equally inscrutable.

“Dr. Harrigan called me this morning because I still hold his medical power of attorney. And that’s why I am here. And I called Joseph and Jack because James was being stubborn and hadn’t called them. And I called Thomas because he and I need to discuss some urgent matters, and I promised James I would be here when he got out of surgery. So, you two need to come up with a plan for how you’re going to operate without a CEO for at least the next two weeks. Press statement, reassure investors, blah blah blah.”

Joseph spoke up. “I just have one question before you go. Why didn’t James tell us he was sick two years ago?”

“He doesn’t trust you to not kick him out of the company. He thinks you resent him for being automatically put in charge without giving you two an equal opportunity at the position.”

Jack and Joseph looked at each other and started laughing.

“Oh god, neither of us want to be CEO. The amount of shit he has to deal with? No, thank you.” Jack said, and Joey nodded.

“Well, when he gets out of surgery, you need to tell him that. He thinks you guys hate him. He has for a long time.”

Their laughter faded. “Really?”

Cora nodded.

“We’ll fix this, muffin,” Jack said.

Joseph nodded. “Thanks for telling us. Now that we know the problem, we can solve it.”

“Now, you two figure out how to run the company without your brother while not making him think you’re trying to get rid of him, and Thomas and I are going to go have a chat.”

She stood and walked out of the room. All three men watched her leave. Jack looked at Thomas. “Good luck, man. I think you’re going to need it.”

Thomas stood and buttoned his suit coat. “I think I am too.”

“Thank you for doing whatever it was, no matter how illegal it was,” Jack looked at him knowingly, “and saving James’s life. If I was in a similar situation, I’m not sure I would have helped my partner’s ex like you did.”

“I just want Cora to be happy, and she would never be completely happy while James was sick.”

“Thomas,” Joseph said, “take care of her.”

Thomas looked at Joseph. “I will.”

“No, really. She’s gotten a lot stronger since she and James split up. I’ve never seen her take charge of a room before like this. But she’s still got a core as delicate as candy floss. She needs someone who can let her be strong and fragile at the same time.”

Thomas nodded. “Thank you.”

Cora was talking to a nurse when he exited the room. He reached to take her hand but she pulled away from him. “Follow me.” She headed to an exit door and then started climbing the stairs to the roof. He followed behind her, silent but thinking over everything she had said earlier. He still wanted to punch James but the fury was dissipating.

Cora shoved the door to the roof open and walked out into the grey afternoon. She took a deep breath of the cool air, wishing she could release her anger like sweat evaporating from her heart. She finally turned and looked at Thomas.

“How could you do that? How could you intrude on his privacy like that? I told you it was none of your business and you ignored me!” She pounded his chest with the side of her fist.

“What was I supposed to do, Cora? You couldn’t tell me and yet whatever it was you were sworn to secrecy about was keeping you from getting on with your life. You had a tumor killing you just as much as James did, and now they are both getting removed.”

“You violated my privacy. I told you it was none of your business and to leave it alone and you didn’t. How am I supposed to trust you now? How can I ever trust your word if you deliberately do things that you know I don’t want you to do?”

“I don’t know. Okay? I don’t know. But at least now we can have a future. You said yourself that you wanted to be able to tell me, that you couldn’t, that it was holding you back. Well, I’ve just given you your future back, and I pray to God that you’ll choose to spend it with me, but at least you have it now, without anything holding you back, tying you to a mistake that someone else made. You can be happy now, and if it’s with James at least I don’t have to see you drowning in sadness and not able to throw you a fucking lifesaver.”

She stared at his face, watching the anguish roiling in his eyes. She could see how much he had agonized over this decision. “Did you do this for me or did you do it for you?”

“I did it for you, in the hope that someday you and I could become us.”

She looked down at the roof, covered in pebbles and cigarette butts and the detritus of a thousand discarded arguments and prayers for mercy. “I don’t know how to trust you now.”

“I don’t know what to tell you about that. I can swear that I would only breach your privacy in the case of an emergency, but that doesn’t mean anything right now, and we could differ over what counts as an emergency, and then where would we be? But Cora, you just spilled James’s secrets to his brothers because you wanted to help him. People do things when they are motivated out of love that they wouldn’t otherwise do.”

She hadn’t thought about it like that. True, the extent wasn’t quite the same, but she had shown James’s vulnerabilities to his brothers, something he never would have agreed to do himself.

Thomas continued. “James asked me why I gave him this information, knowing he would try and win you back, and I told him that we’re a lot alike. That we both want you to be happy, even if it’s not with us. You can hate me for this, but I really did it to make you happier.”

“Your motivation may have been in the right place, and the ends turned out wonderfully for James. But the means you used… How often do you do stuff like this?”

“I’ve never hacked anyone’s medical files before.”

“Have you done other illegal things?”

“I would prefer the term quasi-legal.”

“I’m sure you would.”

“How can this be a surprise to you? James does the same kind of things. Information is how we make a living.”

“That doesn’t mean I have to like it. And it doesn’t mean I want to be treated like a company you’re trying to hostilely takeover.” She hit him in the chest again.

“I’ve never raised a hand to you, Cora. I have treated you with the utmost respect, unlike that man downstairs.”

“Don’t you dare accuse him of being violent with me.”

“Cora, you’ve got the evidence on your body. The steroids or whatever is going on just reveals what he’s been keeping hidden for so long.”

“No. That’s not true.”

“He threatened you last night, Cora. He hurt you. How can you just forgive him so easily?”

“Because that’s not who he is!” she yelled.

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because I have information you don’t.”

“Like what?”

“Fine. If we’re going to just invade everyone’s privacy now, then I’ll tell you. You know how I told you I was a virgin until I met James? That’s not technically true.”

“Technically? What does that mean?”

“I was raped when I was sixteen.” She sounded clinical, detached, but she wouldn’t look at him.

“Oh, Cora, I’m so sorry.” He reached for her but she pulled back.

“It was why I was such a tease, I guess. I wanted to get to say no. But James was patient with me. We had been dating for two months and I told him I was a virgin. It took another two months before I told the truth. He’s the only person I ever told. I guess now you’re the second.” She shook her head and sighed. “He saw how much I hated myself for what had happened. I thought I was dirty, that I was worthless because of what some jerk did to me at a party, that I hadn’t been strong enough to fight him off. James slowly and lovingly convinced me otherwise. He was the one that made me believe that being raped didn’t change who I was. He convinced me that virginity isn’t something that can be taken, it can only be given. It took another four months before we had sex because I kept having panic attacks when we would get intimate. He never got mad, he never blamed me, he never pushed. He just loved me and helped me work through things and feel safe. It’s why we waited another three years to get married, because I wanted to stop having the stupid panic attacks before I married him. I wanted that part of my life over before I started a new one. We would be in the middle of having sex, and I would freak out and he would stop instantly. He never put his own sexual desires above my wellbeing.”

She stopped and took a deep breath. “I’ve called him my gentle giant before and it’s true. He never did anything to make me feel uncomfortable with him.” She looked up at Thomas, needing him to see the truth of what she was saying. “He never threatened or coerced or guilted me into having sex. He never raised his voice or his hand to me. That’s why last night hurt so much. I thought he had been fooling me for our entire relationship, like everything I had known was a lie. But it wasn’t. He loved me so much, and maybe we had problems communicating about expectations and roles and whether or not I was happy, but that blame lies on me as much as on him. He would never deliberately hurt me. I would stake my life on it.”

Thomas gently touched her face, stroking a thumb across the tear track on her cheek. “I’m sorry for not taking your word for it. And I know what I did was wrong, but I can’t be sorry for what I did. I’m not sorry for trying to make you happier.”

“If I hadn’t found out that you were involved, would have told me?”

“Probably not. I didn’t want you to think I was trying to take credit for saving him.”

“What if it had been something else? Some crazy secret in James’s past? What would you have done then?”

“I never would have done anything to deliberately hurt James. It would hurt you as a byproduct.”

She stared at the skyline for a long time, trying to absorb everything that had been thrown at her today. “I should probably go back down and see what Jack and Joseph have gotten up to.”

“I’m sorry for the pain I caused you, Cora.”

“I know. But being sorry doesn’t make it all better.” She couldn’t look at him.

“Let me earn back your trust.”

“I don’t know how that would even begin to work.”

“Let me think of something?” The pleading tone in his voice echoed the pleading tone she had heard from James earlier.

“You can try.”

She left him standing on the rooftop as she went back down to James.

 

 

**James - on his honeymoon with Cora**


	12. Chapter 12

Thomas clutched the paper in his hand as he pounded on Cora’s door. When there was no answer, he got out his key and opened it, revealing a completely empty flat. She hadn’t been lying. She was gone.

He had been surprised to find the note taped to his door when he got home from work. He was back on the lift halfway through the first paragraph.

_Thomas,_

_I promised you I wouldn’t just run away from you again. So, this is me telling you I’m leaving. The last four days have been insane – sometimes literally. There is so much chaos right now with James and with you and I don’t know how to deal with all of it. But I do know that I want to figure it out and make a good choice._

_I’ve always followed the path of least resistance. James was my brother’s friend. I knew he was safe. I only ever dated him. I got married the week after I graduated from college. I knew I was going to marry a man that meant I would never have to worry about money. I would never have to work. I could do anything I wanted. Instead I did nothing. I knew you were safe. I knew you cared for me. I used that to meet my own needs. I didn’t do anything to fix the problems in my marriage. I moved in to the flat I have because it was already in the building. You were already there._

_I haven’t had an unknown in my life since I was a school girl. I haven’t had a goal. I have learned a lot about who I am in the last few years, and I would like to get to know more. So, I’m moving out. I bought a flat with a big windowed space for a studio and built in bookshelves. I’m going to go to the markets and buy local food and work on my cooking skills. Maybe Talie and I will finally go to France and take a summer course at Le Cordon Bleu. There are so many things I’ve never done because I always put someone else’s needs ahead of my own. I won’t do that anymore._

_You might think this is crazy but it’s my choice. And really, that’s what it comes down to. You and James are a lot alike. You both say you want me to be happy, even if it’s not with you.  I hope both of you meant it, because James is getting a similar letter to this one. I’m going to go be happy on my own. And then, and only then, when I trust myself because I actually know who I am, will I be ready to actually be in a relationship._

_Neither of you trust me. You say you love me, and I’m sure you mean it, but both of you have made choices for me that you insist were for my own benefit against my express wishes, and I don’t know how to be happy with someone who thinks that my own wishes don’t matter._

_I love you, Thomas, but that’s not enough. The one thing all three of us agree on is that I should be happy. So I’m going to do that._

_Don’t call me. I’ll contact you when I’m ready._

_Love,_

_Cora_

He went to Talie’s but she refused to give him any information, so he did the next thing he could think of. He went to see James.

He knocked on the door to James’s hospital room and was bid enter. When he swung the door open, he saw James lying in the bed, hooked up to multiple monitors that provided a lulling hum of background noise. Joseph and Jack were sprawled in chairs. They were watching a football match on the telly and all looked surprised to see him.

“How are you recovering?” Thomas asked, suddenly embarrassed to be there.

“Morphine is my friend,” James said.

“I can imagine.” He paused, awkward under the scrutiny of the three of them. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

“You’ve done enough.” He laughed and then winced from the pain. “And I mean that in a good way.”

“Between you and Cora, things are actually getting much better. It feels like we have our brother back,” Joseph added.

Thomas tried to smile. “You three getting along then?”

“The fact that he literally can’t get away from us has helped,” Jack said.

“And the morphine,” James added.

“Have you seen Cora today?”

James shook his head. “She came by while I was sleeping. Left me a letter.” He looked at the crumpled piece of ivory paper in Thomas’s hand. “I see you got one, too.”

“Did she give you any contact information for her?”

James shook his head. “You want to swap letters?”

Thomas was surprised at the show of vulnerability from James. “Are you sure?”

“I’m interested to know if she treated you any better than she treated me.”

Thomas handed his letter to James, and took James’s letter off of his table.

_James,_

_I’m going away. I just can’t deal with you right now. You are so much of my past that trying to get free is like trying to escape from a black hole. And it’s not that I want to escape from my past as much as I need to move beyond it. I don’t know what my future holds. I don’t know what place, if any, you will have in it. All I know is that I was lazy when I was married to you, and I don’t want to be lazy again if I come back, so I need some time to figure out who I am._

_I bought a flat and I moved in this morning. I’m going to make my space my own and figure out who I am on my own, because really, I’ve never been on my own. You wrapped your arms around me when I was still really young, and it was wonderful and comfortable and safe, but I forgot to learn how to fly. So I’m going to go test my wings._

_I love you so much for everything you did for me. There has never been a woman who was cared for the way I was. There’s just one problem. You didn’t trust me to know what was best for me. And at the bottom of all things, I can’t be with someone who doesn’t trust me to make decisions for myself._

_You have a problem with trust. People want to love you but you don’t trust them. I wanted to love you. Joey and Jack want to love you. You need to learn to let people in. Your brothers are not your father. They don’t need you to be anything other than your brother. I brought them back into your life for a reason. Please don’t kick them out again. You may be strong enough to survive on your own, but you won’t thrive that way._

_You told me once that you wanted me to be happy, even if it isn’t with you. I’m going to try and make that happen. I’ll always love you._

_Cora_

Thomas handed the letter back. He managed to stay for a few minutes of awkward conversation, but soon left. As he walked back to his car, he contemplated what to do. If she wouldn’t give him her address, he could track her down. The transfer of title on the property would have to be recorded in the next month. He could pull her financial records, trace the payments and figure out where she was staying. There were lots of things he could do.

As he got behind the wheel of his Jaguar, it suddenly hit him. Cora’s letter hadn’t been a goodbye so much as it had been a wait and see. Cora was giving him an opportunity to prove that he could stay out of her business, even if he didn’t want to. She had to know he could find her. She was giving him the chance to regain her trust.

As he turned the key in the ignition he wondered how long it would take.


	13. Chapter 13

_Nine months later_

Luke knocked on Thomas’s door. “Sir, I think you should see this.” He handed a heavily embossed square invitation to his boss.

Thomas looked at the paper. It was an invitation to the opening of an art exhibit. It wasn’t something he normally would attend, and he didn’t even recognize the name of the gallery. He was puzzled about why Luke was looking at him so expectantly and then he saw it.

Rock, Paper, Scissors

featuring the art of Cora Hawthorne

Opening Reception Sunday, March 22nd

 from three to six o’clock in the evening

He handed the invitation to Luke. “Make sure it’s in my diary.” Less than two weeks, he thought. Less than two weeks and he would see her again. He tried not to read too much into her having gone back to her maiden name. Fighting down the urge to call James and ask if he had gotten an invitation as well, he went back to work.

The day of the reception arrived and found Thomas pacing his flat like a caged racehorse. He had finally settled on a navy blue suit over a light blue button down, agonizing over the tie versus no-tie option for so long that he finally gave up and wore one on the basic rule that it was better to be overdressed than underdressed.

He didn’t want to be the first one there and look as if he were overeager, but he also didn’t want to be so late that it looked like he was being rude, so at four o’clock he walked into the gallery. It was a small space, but for the scale of Cora’s work, it seemed perfect. He recognized a few of the people milling around and admiring the framed and matted artwork. He saw Talie in one corner, chatting animatedly with a few women he didn’t know. There were some familiar faces from social events but overwhelming majority of them were strangers to him, and he realized how out of place he felt in this part of Cora’s life now.

He didn’t see Cora anywhere so he started to wander the gallery and look at the art hanging on the walls. He was quickly amazed by what she had done. Though he recognized the seeds of what he was seeing from things she had done when they were together, all of the pieces were new and unfamiliar and delivered on the promise that he had recognized in her earlier work. It was like looking at a combination of painting and bas relief sculpture. As she cut into the stacks of paper, each layer revealed a shade or dimension that added to the work as a whole, and in each artwork he recognized a piece of the paper he had brought back for her.

They were all depictions of fairy tales and myths with a twist. Little Red Riding Hood, with a wolf head as the hood of her cloak. Icarus, with a trail of paper feathers that coalesced into a swan. A damsel in shining armor fighting a dragon. He bent close to see the embossed detailing of the dragon’s scales, and the way she had used sheets of thin metal for the armor and the dragon’s hoard of jewels.

The one that blew him away was a four piece installation. The first scene was Cinderella weeping, her dress torn and dirty. The second scene was her at the ball, dancing with her prince. The third scene was the familiar glass slipper on the staircase, and he wondered how she had made paper glisten like glass in the sunlight. The final scene was Cinderella blowing glass and making a new slipper. The sweat dripping off her face as she stood over the forge was made of the same paper as the earlier tears, but this time she was smiling. He looked around for one of the gallery attendants, acquired a sold sticker, and placed it on the placard next to the artwork.

He was still staring at it when he heard a familiar voice from behind him. “Thank you for becoming a patron of the arts.” He smiled before he even turned around.

“Hello, Cora.”

“Hello, Thomas.”

He couldn’t help but look her up and down, searching for any differences from the last time he had seen her. She was wearing a dress the color of her cheeks after she orgasmed. The fitted bodice and full skirt could have made it seem very retro, but on her, with her messily styled hair and glossy lips, it seemed perfect.

She was doing the same thing to him. His curls were a bit shorter, and he was sporting a goatee which was new. She reached out and touched the collar bar he was wearing. “This is new.”

He smiled. “I wasn’t sure how formal this would be, and I didn’t want to be underdressed.”

“You look perfect.” She itched to touch his face, to feel the scratch of his beard against her palm.

“You seem to have quite the turnout.”

She looked around at the gallery, full of her art and people admiring it. “I know. I’m a little overwhelmed actually. I didn’t think this many people would come.”

“I’m proud of you.”

“Thank you. I have to go mingle, but I would love to catch up with you.” She toyed with the platinum thumb ring she was wearing. “I don’t suppose you are free this evening?” She looked up at him hesitantly, biting the inside of her bottom lip.

“Actually, I am.” Her smile was like sunrise. “Would you like me to make reservations somewhere?”

“How about you get take-away? We can have an evening in and that way we don’t have to worry about monopolizing some poor waiter’s table all night.”

“That sounds like a perfect plan. Shall I collect you here a little after six?”

She nodded and he bent down to kiss her on the cheek. Her breath caught in her throat as the familiar smell of his skin triggered a cascade of reactions in her body that caused the blood to rush out of her brain and pool low in her stomach. “I am so very proud of you,” he murmured in her ear, and then he stood back up. “I’ll see you soon.” He winked at her, a cheeky grin resurrected for her that hadn’t seen the light of day in months.

True to his word, when Cora stepped outside the gallery at a quarter past six, he was lounging against his car waiting for her. He smiled when he saw her and stood.

“You look like an advert,” she teased him.

“For what?”

“I’m not sure. Expensive cars, expensive suits,” she said, “sex,” she muttered under breath.

“I’m sorry, darling, I don’t think I caught that last part.” The glint in his eyes argued otherwise.

“Oh, it was nothing.”

The flippant comment hung in the air between them and she was caught in his gaze like a fly in a web. “Was it?”

“No.” She gave in and raised her hand to stroke his cheek, letting his beard tickle her hand. “It was never nothing.”

Comforted, he turned his head and kissed her palm, and then opened the car door for her. Once he pulled out in traffic, a tense quiet fell in the car, both of them unsure of exactly what level of familiarity they were allowed.

“You should turn right up here,” she pointed to the upcoming intersection.

He looked confused. “Where are we going?”

“My flat?”

“Oh, right. Muscle memory set in and I was just taking you home.” He paused and then corrected himself. “To my place, I mean.”

She smiled as she looked out the window. Twenty minutes later, he parked the car at her new building. It was in a nice neighborhood, though a little trendy for his tastes, filled with old warehouses that had been renovated into little boutiques, ethnic eateries, and walkup flats. She unlocked the front door, painted a shocking vermillion, and let him in to her new home. The entry stairs led up to a huge open room that combined a living space with a kitchen and eating area. The building had been knocked back to the walls, and showed lots of exposed brick and old beams with huge paned windows. It was very different from the flat she had lived in before, but he felt like it suited her. Huge overstuffed furniture, pillows everywhere, and rugs layered on the floor lent coziness to what could have been a very industrial atmosphere.

“I like it.”

She smiled. “So do I.” She kicked off the heels she was wearing. “It feels like home.” She suddenly threw her arms out and spun in circles, letting loose with a scream of elation. She spun until she was dizzy and slowed to a stop, grabbing on to the back of the sofa for support.

She grinned at Thomas. “Sorry, I’ve been wanting to do that all afternoon, but it wouldn’t have been professional to do it at the gallery. I had my first solo show!” She shrieked again, the sound echoing back from the rafters. “And everything sold!  _Everything!_ ” She giggled. “I must seem a right loon to you.”

He grinned at her. “You seem happy.”

“Oh, you have no idea, Thomas. I love this flat, and I love my life, and I’m an artist, just like I swore I would be when I was eighteen, and, oh, you should see my studio, it’s amazing.” She grabbed him by the hand and tugged him through an archway that was set into the kitchen wall before coming to a screeching halt. “Oh, maybe you shouldn’t see my studio right now. It’s a bit wonky with the show and everything.” She looked around in dismay at the flotsam and jetsam of the last few weeks’ efforts.

Thomas looked around the bright and colorful lofted space. Two stories tall, the far wall was completely full of windows, the ledge overflowing with all sorts of potted plants. The orchid he had brought her so long ago was in bloom. The wall he had just entered through was wall to wall bookshelves. The side walls were covered in racks of paper and matting supplies and other things he didn’t recognize. A large table took up the center of the room. It seemed at an odd height and then he realized it would be waist high on Cora when she was standing. She must have had it custom made to her petite frame. A spiral staircase stood in the corner, leading to an open second storey.

“What’s up there?” He pointed to the space, distinguished by an elaborate wrought iron balcony and nothing else.

She laughed. “That’s my bedroom.”

He looked from the open space to the windows facing it and back. “Aren’t you worried about someone peeping?”

She shook her head, and the excited grin of a child at Christmas crept over her face. “Push the button,” and she pointed to a button set into the light switch panel. He did and the windows turned opaque.

“Smart glass,” she said. “Electro-chromic something or other. It’s also UV protected so I don’t have to worry about my supplies fading in the sunlight, and the windows face north, too. Besides, you know, just being in London.” She laughed again. “Getting those done cost almost as much as the flat, but it just made this whole space perfect.”

Thomas watched as she looked around her studio. She was radiant, glowing with an enthusiasm and vitality he had never seen in her before, even at her happiest moments with him. She sighed contentedly looking around at her workplace, and smiled. She tapped the button to make the windows transparent again. “We should probably eat before the food gets any colder.”

She offered the table or the sofa, and he chose the sofa. He shed his suit coat and his tie, and unbuttoned the top two buttons of his shirt, and they curled up at opposite ends of the small sofa, eating Chinese food out of the boxes, handing them back and forth, stealing bits from each other with chopsticks as they chatted about what they had been doing for the last nine months. His life had stayed pretty normal, so they spent most of the time talking about what she had done.

“I went camping for the first time.”

“Did you like it?”

“We got rained on one night, but other than that it was a lot of fun. Kyle taught me how to start a fire without matches and find north by the stars.”

“And who is Kyle?” Thomas arched an eyebrow at her over his box of chicken and cashews.

She blushed and looked down at the container of spicy shrimp, looking for the biggest one. “He’s a guy I dated for a while.”

“Did you date a lot?” He did his best to seem disinterested, but he couldn’t look at her.

“Actually, yes.” She watched his jaw work to the side a little bit. “Lots of first dates, fewer seconds, even fewer thirds. I had a couple relationships last a few months, but nothing got super serious.” She could see his jaw come back to center. “Kyle was one of the longer ones. He was a lot of fun.”

There was a long pause and then Thomas asked the question that had been gnawing at him all afternoon. “Have you seen James?”

“Oh, yeah, I saw him about,” she stopped to think, “four months ago?”

“Oh.” He sat back against the sofa, his shoulders slouching.

“I went to lunch with him and his brothers and his new girlfriend.”

“Oh.” He sounded surprised.

Cora giggled. “You should see the look on your face.”

“What does it look like?”

“As if you just got dealt four aces in five card stud and are desperately trying to hold your poker face.”

“I’m just…surprised…that he was dating again after all you two went through.”

“She was his physical therapist. I like her. She stands up to him in a way I never did, and she’s making him actually be smart about his recovery and making him stay involved with his brothers.”

“You’re not jealous or angry?”

“I was surprised at first, but then I saw them together and they just work. Once I got away from all the immediacy of everything happening right there in my face, it was easy to realize that I wasn’t in love with him anymore. I love him, and he’ll always be part of my life, but I had fallen in love with you since I had been with him. I was angry about seeing him with other women when I felt like I hadn’t been given a choice, but now I had a choice. I could have stayed with him. He would have welcomed me back and I would have been alright. But when I was standing in that hospital room watching him come out from under the anesthesia, all I could feel was panic at the thought that I was back to taking care of him for a living.”

“Are you dating someone right now?”

“Kind of.” She smiled at him. “It’s in a weird complicated place right now.”

“Lucky man.”

“I just don’t know what he thinks of me. I’ve done a lot of thinking over the last several months. I’ve realized that I like having someone to share my life with. I think I’m ready to settle down, get married, have a baby. I want someone to wake up to each morning and go to bed with each night. I’m ready to actually be with someone with my whole heart.” She was fiddling with the ring on her thumb again.

He set his food on the coffee table. “I should probably be going.”

“So soon?”

He nodded. “I need to go.”

“Um, okay.” She stood awkwardly by while he gathered his suit coat and walked him to the door. He stopped with his hand on the doorknob and turned to her and bent down and kissed her on the cheek. “I’m glad you’re so happy. And whoever he is, I hope he realizes how lucky he is.”

She looked up at him and smiled. “You’re really stupid, did you know that?”

“What?” His brows narrowed in confusion.

“I was talking about you.”

“What?” She could see the realization dawning in his eyes and she had to fight back a laugh.

“I’m in a weird complicated relationship with  _you_. Even away from you, every man I dated got compared to you. But you know, James moved on pretty easily, and I wasn’t sure if you still cared, and I don’t know how,” her words were cut off by his lips. He dropped his coat to the floor and grasped her face with his hands, his lips firm on hers.

“If you think I will ever stop caring for you,” he said against her lips when he finally came up for air “you’re the stupid one.”

She held on to his wrists as he clasped her face, panting heavily. “I had this speech I was going to make and this whole thing planned, but I panicked.”

“Do you want to make the speech now?” He kissed her softly.

“I kind of did it earlier, but apparently I did it wrong.”

“You know I believe in do-overs.”

“Okay, so go sit down on the sofa.”

He did so, wondering what she was up to as she went into the kitchen. She came back a minute later with an uncorked bottle of wine, two wine glasses, and a plate.

“So, here we have a flourless chocolate torte with a kahlua ganache that I made,” she said as she put the plate on the table in front of him.

“That looks delicious.”

“Oh, forks!”

She put down the wine and glasses and ran back into the kitchen. When she came back with the forks, Thomas was pouring the wine. “I see you remembered my preference for expensive and pretentious,” he said, his lips quirking up.

“I wondered if you would remember that label.”

“I remember everything about that night.” He looked at her seriously and she could remember the feel of his arm around her shoulders as they had watched  _The Great Escape._

She handed him a fork and he took a bite of the torte. “Oh my god,” he moaned around a mouthful, “this is amazing.”

“Thank you.”

“You made this?” he asked before taking another bite.

She nodded, her ability to speak impeded by watching his lips tug against the fork as he pulled it from his mouth.

“Where did you learn to bake like this?” He couldn’t help himself from taking another bite.

“Talie and I took a baking class in France last fall.”

“So you can make all sorts of puddings now?”

She nodded.

“Just when I thought it was impossible to love you more than I already did.” He smiled and took another bite.

Cora wiped her suddenly sweaty palms against her skirt. “Okay, so, I’m going to say my little speech now.”

Thomas put down the fork and looked up at her expectantly.

“I left you to learn who I was and what I wanted out of life. And what I learned is that I am a creator. Whether it’s a cake or a piece of art or a home, I find joy in making things that weren’t there before. I am happy without you, but I would be immeasurably happier with you. I want to make a home with you, Thomas. I want to make a home and a life and a child with you.” She slipped to her knees in front of him and took a deep breath. “Thomas William Hiddleston, will you marry me?”

His jaw dropped slightly in surprise at her question. When she had knelt in front of him thoughts of something else entirely had invaded his mind, but the hopeful expectant look on her face tinged with the slightest bit of trepidation brought him back to the reality of this magical moment.

“Yes.”

She smiled tremulously. “Yes?”

He grabbed her hands and pulled her up onto his lap. “Yes.” He kissed her again, soft and tender and she slid one arm around his neck and ran her fingers through his hair and let her other hand stroke his beard. She parted her lips under his gentle pressure and moaned into his mouth at the almost forgotten taste of him mixed with dark chocolate and red wine. His hands roamed up and down her back, relearning the shape of her body as he pressed it against his chest. With each movement, she shifted in his lap and he could feel himself responding and hardening under the gentle friction.

She pulled back unexpectedly. “I almost forgot,” she exclaimed.

“Forgot what?”

She pulled the ring off of her thumb. “Your engagement ring.” She grinned up at him. She held the ring with her thumb and finger. “No more running. No more waiting.” She held it up so he could see that there was engraving inside. He turned the ring in her hand and read, “Here. Now. Yours. Love, Cora” around the interior of the band. When his eyes lifted to hers again, she slipped the ring on his hand.

“Now you’re mine.” She kissed him softly.

“And you’re mine,” he replied, kissing her back.

“Yes.”

“When do you want me to move in?” he murmured as he kissed along her jaw line, seeking that spot where it joined with her ear that always made her whimper.

“Yester,” she gasped as he found it, “day.”

“When do you want to get married?” She heard the gentle rasp of her zipper being undone down her back and his warm hand sliding inside her dress and pressing against her spine.

“Soon,” she murmured as he sucked a mark of ownership onto the fragile skin behind her ear.

“And when do you want to make a baby?” His teeth slid against the shell of her ear.

“Now.”

And they did.

Eight and half months later, little Daphne Irene joined her parents in the renovated loft that was her new home. Her mommy taught her to draw and to paint and to follow her dreams. Her daddy taught her to be true to herself, so that she could be false to no other. She was spoiled like a princess, but had the heart of a lion and the compassion of a saint. A few years later, the princess was joined by a little prince, David Bennett, who grew to be tall, and brave, and gentle. And they all lived happily – most of the time – ever after.


End file.
